Now that they were so numerous the brothers could not continue their wandering life in all respects as in the past. They had need of a permanent shelter and above all of a little chapel. Addressing themselves first in vain to the bishop and then to the canons of San Rufino for the loan of what they needed, they were eventually more fortunate with the abbot of the Benedictines of Mount Subasio. He ceded them in perpetuity the use of a chapel already very dear to their hearts—Santa Maria degli Angeli, or, the Portiuncula.
Francis was enchanted. He saw a mysterious harmony, ordained by God, between the name of the humble sanctuary and that of his Order. The brothers quickly built for themselves a few huts; a quickset hedge served as enclosing wall, and thus in three or four days was organized the first Franciscan convent.
For ten years they were satisfied with this. These ten years are the heroic period of the Order. St. Francis, in full possession of his ideal, sought to inculcate it upon his disciples and succeeded sometimes; but already the too rapid multiplication of the brotherhood provoked some symptoms of relaxation.
The remembrance of the beginning of this period drew from the lips of Thomas of Celano a sort of canticle in honor of the monastic life. It is the burning and untranslatable commentary of the psalmist’s cry: “Behold how sweet and pleasant it is to be brothers and to dwell together.”
Their cloister was the forest that extended on all sides of Portiuncula, occupying a large part of the plain. There they gathered around their master to receive his spiritual counsels, and there they retired to meditate and pray. It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that contemplation absorbed them completely during the days that were not consecrated to missionary tours: A part of their time was spent in manual labor.
The intentions of St. Francis have been more misapprehended on this point than on any other. It may be said that nowhere is he more clear than when he ordains that his friars should gain their livelihood by the work of their hands. He never dreamed of creating a mendicant order; he created a laboring order. It is true that we often see him begging and urging his disciples to do the same, but these incidents should not mislead us; they are meant to teach that when a friar arrived in a locale and spent his strength for long days dispensing spiritual bread, he ought not to blush to receive material bread in exchange. To work was the rule, to beg the exception, an exception not at all dishonorable. Did not Jesus and the disciples live on bread given to them? Francis—in his poetic language—gave the name of mensa Domini, the table of the Lord, to this table of love around which gathered the little poor ones. The bread of charity is the bread of angels, and it is also that of the birds, which do not reap or gather into barns.
With all his gentleness, Francis knew how to show an inflexible severity toward the idle. He even went so far as to dismiss a friar who refused to work. The Brothers, after entering the Order, were to continue to exercise the calling that they had when in the world, and if they had none they were to learn one. For payment they were to accept only the food that was necessary for them, but in case that was insufficient they might beg. In addition they were naturally permitted to own the instruments of their calling. Brother Ginepro, whose acquaintance we shall make further on, had an awl, and gained his bread wherever he went by mending shoes, and we see St. Clare working even on her deathbed.
Chesterton explains Francis’s attitude toward asceticism: “It was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure. . . . The whole point of him was that the secret of recovering the natural pleasures lay in regarding them in the light of a supernatural pleasure” (CHESTERTON, pp. 73, 64).
This obligation to work with the hands merits all the more to be brought into the light because it was hardly destined to survive St. Francis, and because to it is due in part the original character of the first generation of the Order. Yet this was not the real reason for the existence of the Brothers Minor. Their mission consisted above all in being the spouses of Poverty.
Terrified by the ecclesiastical disorders of the time, haunted by painful memories of his past life, Francis saw in money the special instrument of the devil. In moments of excitement he went so far as to execrate it, as if there had been in the metal itself a sort of magical power and secret curse. Money was truly for him the sacrament of evil. He felt that in this respect the Rule could not be too absolute, and that if unfortunately the door was opened to various interpretations of it, there would be no stopping point. The course of events and the periodical convulsions that shook his Order show clearly enough how rightly he judged.
Sabatier foreshadows the unfortunate interior struggles that ripped apart the Order after Francis’s death. The “Spirituals” were pitted against leaders of the Order over the subject of faithfulness to Francis’s Rule and ideals regarding living a life of poverty. Raphael Brown summarizes the position of the Spirituals, placing Joachim of Fiore in the equation as he describes “the so-called zelanti, or Spirituals, fanatical Joachimist rigorists and contemplatives who considered the Rule and Testament of St. Francis divinely inspired documents that were equal in rank to the Gospels and were destined to effect in an imminent new age the complete regeneration of the Church and society” (BROWN, pp. 19–20).
St. Francis renounced everything only that he might better possess everything. The lives of the immense majority of our contemporaries are ruled by the fatal error that the more one possesses the more one enjoys. Our exterior, civil liberties continually increase, but at the same time our inward freedom is taking flight. How many are there among us who are literally possessed by what we possess?
Poverty permitted the brothers to mingle with the poor and speak to them with authority. The ever-thickening barriers that modern life, with its sickly search for useless comfort, has set up between us and nature did not exist for these men, so full of youth and life, eager for wide spaces and the outdoor air. This is what gave Francis and his companions that quick susceptibility to nature that made them thrill in mysterious harmony with her. Their communion with nature was so intimate, so ardent, that Umbria, with the harmonious poetry of its skies, the joyful outburst of its springtime, is still the best document from which to study them.
The originality of St. Francis was brilliant; with him Gospel simplicity reappeared upon the earth. Conversions multiplied with an incredible rapidity. Often, as formerly with Jesus, a look, a word sufficed Francis to attach to himself people who would follow him until their death. It is impossible to analyze the best of this eloquence, all made of love, intimate apprehension, and fire. The written word can no more give an idea of it than it can give us an idea of a sonata of Beethoven or a painting by Rembrandt.
The class from which Francis recruited his disciples was still about the same. They were nearly all young men of Assisi and its environs, some the sons of agriculturists, and others nobles; the School and the Church were represented very little among them. Men entered the Order without a novitiate of any sort. It sufficed to say to Francis that they wanted to lead with him a life of evangelical perfection, and to prove it by giving all that they possessed to the poor. The more unpretentious were the neophytes the more tenderness he had for them. Like his Master, he had a partiality for those who were lost, for people whom regular society casts out of its limits, but who with all their crimes and scandals are nearer to sainthood than mediocrities and hypocrites.
Benedict of Nursia’s foundational Rule for monks, written about 1,500 years ago, contains similar but softer regulations of poverty, compared to Francis’s teachings. Francis’s aims were to correct the abuses and laxity that had become commonplace since Benedict, and to follow to the letter the injunctions of Jesus to the first apostles.
In one place, Benedict wrote: “For bedding, a mattress, a blanket, a coverlet and a pillow are enough. The beds should be frequently inspected by the Abbot as a precaution against private possessions. If anyone is found to have anything which was not given him by the Abbot, he is to undergo the severest punishment” (PARRY, p. 87).
The life at Portiuncula must have been very different from that of an ordinary monastery. So much youth, simplicity, and love quickly drew the eyes of people toward it. From all sides they were turned to those thatched huts, where dwelt a spiritual family whose members loved one another more than people love on earth, leading a life of labor, mirth, and devotion. The humble chapel seemed a new Zion destined to enlighten the world, and many in their dreams beheld blind humanity coming to kneel there and recover sight.
Among the first disciples who joined themselves to St. Francis we must mention Brother Sylvester, the first priest who entered the Order, the very same whom we have already seen the day that Bernard of Quintavalle distributed his goods among the poor. Since then he had not had a moment’s peace, bitterly reproaching himself for his avarice.
By his age and the nature of the memory he has left behind, Sylvester resembles Brother Bernard. He was what is usually understood by a holy priest, but nothing denotes that he had the truly Franciscan love of great enterprises, distant journeys, perilous missions. Withdrawn into one of the grottos of the Carceri, absorbed in the contemplative life, he gave spiritual counsel to his brothers as occasion served.
The typical Franciscan priest is Brother Leo. The date of his entrance into the Order is not exactly known, but we are probably not far from the truth in placing it about 1214. Of a charming simplicity—tender, affectionate, refined—he was, with Brother Elias, the one who played the noblest part during the obscure years in which the new reform was being elaborated.
We still should say a word concerning two disciples who were always closely united with Brother Leo in the Franciscan memorials—Rufino and Masseo.
Rufino, Leo, Angelo (the “three companions” who composed The Legend of the Three Companions), and Masseo were four of Francis’s closest friends. In both age and spirit, they were like his sons. The four of them were buried near Francis, “at the four corners of his sarcophagus” (HOUSE, p. 113).
Born of a noble family connected with that of St. Clare, Rufino was soon distinguished in the Order for his visions and ecstasies, but his great timidity checked him as soon as he tried to preach. For this reason he is always to be found in the most isolated hermitages—Carceri, Verna, Greccio.
Masseo of Marignano, a small village in the environs of Assisi, was his very opposite. Handsome, well-made, witty, he attracted attention by his fine presence and his great facility of speech. He occupies a special place in popular Franciscan tradition. He deserves it. St. Francis, to test his humility, made Masseo the porter and cook of the hermitage, but in these functions Masseo showed himself to be so perfectly a Minor that from that time the master particularly loved to have him for companion in his missionary journeys.
For several years the Brothers Minor traveled from lazaretto to lazaretto, preaching by day in the towns and villages and retiring at night to these refuges, where they rendered to the lepers, these “patients of God,” the most repugnant services. The Crucigeri Order, who took charge of the majority of leper-houses and hospitals, always welcomed these kindly disposed aides, who, far from asking any sort of recompense, were willing to eat whatever the patients might have left. The following narrative shows Francis’s love for these unfortunates, and his method with them:
It happened one time that the Brothers were serving the lepers and the sick in a hospital, near to the place where St. Francis was. Among them was a leper who was so impatient, so unendurable, that everyone believed him to be possessed by the devil, and rightly enough, for he heaped insults and blows upon those who waited upon him. The Brothers would willingly have endured the insults and abuse which he lavished upon them, in order to augment the merit of their patience, but their souls could not consent to hear those which he uttered against Christ and his Mother. They therefore resolved to abandon this leper, but not without having told the whole story exactly to St. Francis, who at that time was dwelling not far away.
When they told him, St. Francis went to the leper, saying, “May God give you peace, my most dear brother.”
“And what peace,” asked the leper, “can I receive from God, who has taken away my peace and every good thing, and has made my body a mass of stinking and corruption?”
St. Francis said to him: “My brother, be patient, for God gives us diseases in this world for the salvation of our souls, and when we endure them patiently they are a fountain of great merit to us.”
“How can I endure patiently pains which torture me day and night? And it is not only my disease that I suffer from, but the friars that you gave me to wait upon me are unendurable, and do not take care of me as they ought.”
Then St. Francis took to his knees to pray for the man: “My son, since you are not satisfied with the others, I will wait upon you.”
“That is all very well, but what can you do for me more than they?”
“I will do whatever you wish.”
“Very well. I wish you to wash me from head to foot, for I smell so badly that I disgust myself.”
Then St. Francis made haste to heat some water with many sweet-smelling herbs. He took off the leper’s clothes and began to bathe him, while another brother poured out the water. And behold, wherever St. Francis touched him with his holy hands the leprosy disappeared and the flesh became perfectly sound. And in proportion as the flesh was healed the soul of the wretched man was also healed, and he began to feel a lively sorrow for his sins, and to weep bitterly.
Being completely healed both in body and soul, the man cried with all his might: “I have deserved hell for the abuses and outrages which I have said and done to the brothers, for my impatience and my blasphemies.” (See BROWN, no. 25.)
These details show the Umbrian movement, as it appears to me, to be one of the most humble and at the same time the most sincere and practical attempts to realize the kingdom of God on earth. How far removed we are here from the superstitious vulgarity of mechanical devotion, the deceitful miracle-working of certain Catholics; how far also from the commonplace, complacent, quibbling, theorizing Christianity of certain Protestants!
In Palestine, a few miles southeast of Nazareth, Mount Tabor rises nearly 2,000 feet above the Mediterranean Sea. The Hebrew Bible tells how the prophetess Deborah instructed Barak to go up the mountain and wait for Sisera, general of the army of the Canaanites, to approach from below. Sisera, with all of his chariots, fell into the trap as Barak descended Tabor with ten thousand soldiers and slaughtered the armies of Canaan (Judg. 4:1–16). In contrast to this bit of history, Tabor is known for its beauty and is often referred to poetically as a place of contemplation. Tabor is not mentioned by name in the New Testament, but both Cyril of Jerusalem and Jerome, two of the greatest of the early Church fathers, identify it as the place of Christ’s Transfiguration.
Francis is a mystic for whom no intermediary comes between God and his soul. But his mysticism is that of Jesus leading his disciples to the Tabor of contemplation. When, overflooded with joy, they long to build tabernacles that they may remain on the heights and satiate themselves with the raptures of ecstasy, he says to them, “Fools, you know not what you ask.” And directing their gaze to the crowds wandering like sheep having no shepherd, he leads them back to the plain, to the midst of those who moan, who suffer, who blaspheme.
But the higher the moral stature of Francis the more he was exposed to the danger of being understood only by the very few, and disappointed by those who were nearest to him. Brother Rufino, for example, the same who was destined to become one of the intimates of Francis’s later days, assumed an attitude of revolt shortly after his entrance into the Order. He thought it foolish in Francis when, instead of leaving the friars to give themselves unceasingly to prayer, he sent them out in all directions to wait upon lepers. His own ideal was the life of the hermits of the Thebaide, as it is related in the then popular legends of St. Anthony, St. Paul, St. Pachomius, and others.
Rufino once passed Lent in one of the grottos of the Carceri. Holy Thursday having arrived, Francis, who was also there, summoned all the brothers who were dispersed about the neighborhood, whether in grottos or huts, to observe with him the memories to which this day was consecrated. Rufino refused to come. “For that matter,” he added, “I have decided to follow him no longer. I mean to remain here and live solitary, for in this way I shall be more surely saved than by submitting myself to this man and his nonsense.”
Saints Anthony, Paul, and Pachomius were among the first people to become “desert monks” in the third and fourth centuries C.E., leaving cities like Alexandria and Antioch and entering the desert regions of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria to live in caves. The extreme ascetic feats of these people were often compared to those of the athletes of Greece and Rome.
Young and enthusiastic for the most part, the brothers often found it difficult to keep their work in the background. Agreeing with their master as to fundamentals, they would have liked to make more of a stir, attract public attention by more obvious devotion. There were some among them whom it did not satisfy to be saints, but who also wished to appear such.