The four years that followed the Whitsunday of 1216 form a stage in the evolution of the Umbrian movement when Francis was battling for autonomy. We find here rather delicate shades of distinction that have been misunderstood by Church writers as much as by their adversaries. If Francis was sure not to put himself in an attitude of revolt toward the Church hierarchy, he also would not compromise his independence, and he felt that all the privileges that the court of Rome could heap upon him were worth nothing in comparison with freedom.
A great number of legendary anecdotes put Francis’s disdain for privileges in the clearest light. Even his dearest friends did not always understand his scruples.
“Do you not see,” they said to him one day, “that often the bishops do not permit us to preach, and make us remain several days without doing anything before we are permitted to proclaim the word of God? It would be better to obtain a privilege from the pope, and it would be for the good of souls.”
“I would first convert the prelates by humility and respect,” he replied quickly. “For when they have seen us humble and respectful toward them, they will beg us to preach and convert the people. As for me, I ask of God no privilege unless it be that I may have none, to be full of respect for all people, and to convert them, as our Rule ordains, more by our example than by our speech.”
The question of whether Francis was right or wrong in his antipathy to the privileges of the curia does not come within the domain of history; it is evident that this attitude could not continue long; the Church knows only the faithful and rebels. But the noblest hearts often make a stand at compromises of this kind; they desire that the future should grow out of the past without convulsion and without a crisis.
The chapter of 1217 was notable for the definitive organization of the Franciscan missions. Italy and the other countries were divided off into a certain number of provinces, each having a provincial minister.
Sabatier passes over the death of Pope Innocent III in silence. We have the following story, passed down to us through Jacques of Vitry. “On July 11 [1216] the pope had been struck down by an embolism. Because it was very hot, the funeral rites had been rushed; and there was no one to watch over the body in the locked cathedral. The next day, in the early morning, Vitry entered with several members of the Curia and found Innocent III lying naked and stinking on the pavement, all alone in the somber, massive Romanesque church, which still lay shrouded in night. The pope’s crosier, tiara, and precious vestments had all been carried off by robbers in the darkness. In a famous letter the French bishop described the horror he witnessed. ‘I have seen with my own eyes,’ he added, ‘how vain, brief, and ephemeral is the glory of this world’” (GREEN, p. 174).
__________
In his novel Saint Francis, Nikos Kazantzakis tells his story from the perspective of Brother Leo, the book’s narrator. Kazantzakis supposes that it was Leo—not Elias, as Sabatier believed—who was Francis’s confidant in the early years. In the novel, Leo reminisces to Francis, after the saint’s death: “You told me what you told no one else. You took me by the hand, we went into the forests, scrambled up mountains, and you spoke. . . . I know things about you, therefore, that no other person knows. You committed many more sins than people imagine; you performed many more miracles than people believe” (KAZANTZAKIS, p. 18).
Immediately on his accession, Pope Honorius III had sought to revive the popular zeal for the Crusades. He preached it continuously, appealing to prophecies proclaiming that under his pontificate the Holy Land would be reconquered. The renewal of fervor that ensued, and of which the rebound was felt as far as Germany, had a profound influence on the Brothers Minor. This time Francis, perhaps from humility, did not put himself at the head of the friars charged with a mission to Syria. For a leader he gave them the famous Elias.
This brother, who from this time appears in the foreground of this history, came from the most humble ranks of society. The date and circumstances of his entrance into the Order are unknown, and hence conjecture has come to see in him that friend of the grotto who had been Francis’s confidant shortly before his decisive conversion. In his youth he had earned his living in Assisi, making mattresses and teaching a few children to read. Then he spent some time in Bologna, and then suddenly we find him among the Brothers Minor charged with the most difficult missions.
In the inner Franciscan circle, where Leo, Ginepro, Egidio, and many others represent the spirit of freedom, the religion of the humble and the simple, Elias represents the scientific and ecclesiastical spirit, prudence and reason.
Brother Elias was deposed in 1239 and soon after excommunicated. He repented on his deathbed, but the century of oral tradition that followed, leading up to Brother Ugolino’s compiling of The Little Flowers of St. Francis, portrayed Elias as not only egomaniacal and despotic, but even demonic.
Some historians view Brother Elias in a more gentle light. One historian explains: “His successors, Albert of Pisa and Aymon of Faversham, obtained from the Papal Curia seven times as many Bulls, dispensations and privileges as Elias in the whole period of his rule. They decreed that official posts should be reserved for priests, which signified the exclusion of laymen from all government of the Order” (GOAD, pp. 149–50).
He had great success in Syria and received into the Order one of the disciples most dear to Francis, Caesar of Speyer. Later, Caesar was to make the conquest of all southern Germany in less than two years (1221–23), and in the end he sealed with his blood faithfulness to the strict observance of the Rule, which he defended against the attacks of Brother Elias himself.
Caesar of Speyer offers a brilliant example of those suffering souls thirsty for the ideal, so numerous in the thirteenth century, who everywhere went up and down, seeking first in learning, then in the religious life, that which should assuage the mysterious thirst that tortured them. Disciple of the scholastic Conrad, he had felt himself overpowered with the desire to reform the Church. While still a layperson he had preached his ideas, not without some success, since a certain number of women of Speyer had begun to lead a new life. However, their husbands disapproving, Caesar was obliged to escape their vengeance by taking refuge in Paris, and then he went to the East where in the preaching of the Brothers Minor he found again his hopes and his dreams. This instance shows how general was the waiting condition of souls when the Franciscan gospel blazed forth, and how its way had been prepared everywhere.
The friars who went to Germany under the leadership of Giovanni of Penna were far from having the success of Elias and his companions. They were completely ignorant of the language of the country that they had undertaken to evangelize. Perhaps Francis had not taken into account the fact that, although Italian might suffice in all the countries bathed by the Mediterranean, this could not be the case in central Europe. The lot of the party going to Hungary was not any better, and for the same reasons. We may thank the Franciscan authors for preserving for us the memory of these setbacks, and not attempting to picture the friars as suddenly knowing all languages by divine inspiration, as was so often done later on.
Francis himself made preparations for going to France. When he arrived at Florence he found Cardinal Ugolino there, sent by the pope as legate to Tuscany to preach the crusade and take all necessary measures for assuring its success. Surely, Francis did not expect the reception that the prelate gave him. Instead of offering encouragement, the cardinal urged him to give up his project:
“I am not willing, my brother, that you should cross the mountains. There are many prelates who ask nothing better than to stir up difficulties for you with the court of Rome. But I and the other cardinals who love your Order desire to protect and aid you, on the condition, however, that you do not leave this province.”
“But monsignor,” Francis responded, “it would be a great disgrace for me to send my brothers far away while I remain idly here, sharing none of the tribulations that they must undergo.”
“Why, then, have you sent your brothers so far away, exposing them to starvation and all sorts of perils?” the cardinal asked.
“Do you think,” replied Francis warmly, as if moved by prophetic inspiration, “that God raised up the brothers for the sake of this country alone? God has raised them up for the awakening and the salvation of all people, and they shall win souls not only in the countries of those who believe, but also in the very midst of the infidels.”
The surprise and admiration that these words awoke in Ugolino were not enough to make him change his mind. He insisted so strongly that Francis turned back to Portiuncula. Souls thirsty with the longing for sacrifice often have scruples such as these and they refuse the most lawful joys that they may offer them to God. Instead, Brother Pacifico and Brother Agnello of Pisa, later destined to head the first mission to England in 1224, led the missionaries sent into France.
Francis passed the following year (1218) in evangelizing tours in Italy. It is naturally impossible to follow him in these travels, the itinerary of which was fixed by his daily inspirations. But it is very possible that he paid a visit to Rome during this time.
A fresco painting of Pope Gregory IX (formerly Cardinal Ugolino) in Sacro Speco (“holy cave”), the grotto in which St. Benedict lived for a time in the fifth century. A Benedictine abbey still surrounds this place today in Subiaco, Italy. (Art reproduced from SEDGWICK, 1:110.)
Francis’s communications with Ugolino were much more frequent than is supposed by the early biographers. We must make a larger place for Ugolino in Francis’s story than has been made in the past. At this point in the story, the struggle had definitely opened between the Franciscan ideal—chimerical, perhaps, but sublime—and ecclesiastical policy, to go on until the day when, half in humility, half in discouragement, Francis, heartsick, abdicated the direction of his spiritual family.
Ugolino returned to Rome at the end of 1217. During the following winter he devoted his time to the special study of the question of the new religious orders, and summoned Francis before him. Ugolino, who better than anyone else knew Umbria, Tuscany, Emilia, the March of Ancona, all those regions where the Franciscan preaching had been most successful, was able to judge the power of the new movement and the imperious necessity of directing it. He felt that the best way to allay the prejudices that the pope and the sacred college might have against Francis was to present him before the curia.
At first Francis was much abashed at the thought of preaching before the Vicar of Jesus Christ, but upon the entreaties of his protector he consented, and for greater security he learned by heart what he had to say.
Ugolino himself was not entirely at ease. Thomas of Celano pictures him as devoured with anxiety; he was troubled about Francis, whose artless eloquence ran many a risk in the halls of the Lateran Palace. He was also not without some more personal anxieties, for the failure of his protégé might be most damaging to himself.
Ugolino’s anxiety only increased when, on arriving at the feet of the pontiff, Francis forgot all he had intended to say. But Francis frankly admitted it, and seeking a new discourse from the inspiration of the moment, spoke with so much warmth and simplicity that the assembly was won.
The Holy See must have been greatly perplexed by this strange man, whose faith and humility were evident, but whom it was impossible to teach ecclesiastical obedience. St. Dominic happened to be in Rome at the same time and was overwhelmed with favors by the pope. Several years earlier, Innocent III had asked Dominic to choose one of the rules already approved by the Church for his own, and Dominic had adopted that of St. Augustine. Honorius therefore was not sparing of privileges for him. Ugolino surely tried to use the influence of Dominic’s example with St. Francis.
An English pilgrim of the late Middle Ages described the relics that he was able to see in the Lateran Basilica in Rome at about this time: “the ark of the covenant, the table of the law, the golden urn of manna . . . a tunic made by the Virgin, Christ’s purple garment, two bottles of blood and water from His side, the remains of His cradle, the five loaves and two fishes, the Lord’s table, and the cloth with which He wiped the feet of the apostles; in addition, the blood of John the Baptist and the ashes from his cremation and his hair-shirt . . . and the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul” (PARKS, p. 244).
The curia saw clearly that Dominic, whose order barely comprised a few dozen members, was not one of the moral powers of the time, but its sentiments toward him were not as mixed as they were with regard to Francis. To unite the two orders would have been singularly pleasing to Ugolino.
One day Dominic, by dint of pious insistence, induced Francis to give him his cord, and immediately girded himself with it. “Brother,” he said, “I earnestly long that your order and mine might unite to form one sole and same institute in the Church.” The Brother Minor wished to remain as he was, and declined the proposition. But so truly was Dominic inspired with the needs of his time and of the Church that less than three years after this, at the chapter held at Bologna in 1220, he was led to transform his Order of Canons of St. Augustine into an order of mendicant monks, whose constitutions were outlined on those of the Franciscans.
“There was a striking contrast between Francis and Dominic, manifest even in their physical appearance. Wearing a garment the color of earth and dust, the Poverello reminded the viewer of a sparrow or, as they were called in France, a moineau—a little monk. . . . Dominic was altogether different. In his handsome habit of yellow wool so pale it looked white, he had an air of somewhat intimidating nobility” (GREEN, p. 170).
A few years later the Dominicans took, so to speak, their revenge, and obliged the Brothers Minor to give learning a large place in their work. Thus, the two religious families rivaled each other, impressed and influenced each other, yet never so much as to lose all traces of their origins—summed up for one in poverty and lay preaching, for the other in learning and the preaching of the clergy.
Rosalind Brooke confirms Sabatier’s judgment in the last paragraph of the chapter you have just read, and expands upon it, when she summarizes: “To the disciples of St. Francis it has seemed obvious that Dominic imitated Francis; to students of Dominic the hypothesis has seemed without foundation. The one meeting that is well recorded may have marked a turning point in Dominic’s life. It helped him to see his way to converting his order (a tiny group still at the time), from a group of preachers among the heretics in Languedoc into a worldwide order of friars. But if that is so, the compliment was presently returned. Leading Franciscans studied the organization of the Dominicans and grafted some of it on to their own order. . . . Dominic’s order from the first comprised trained, instructed preachers, intended to fulfill the role the parish clergy of the thirteenth century could least effectively perform. And trained, effective preachers is what the Franciscans soon became – so much so that by the late thirteenth century the role of the lay brothers had been forgotten.” (BROOKE, p. 11–12).
