My God and My All: The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi

  After the pope had died disaster befell his body, a disaster that is somehow typical of the grim and terrible Perugia. For a short while the dead man was left unguarded in the night, and during that eerie time of darkness thieves crept into the death chamber and stripped the corpse of all its jewels. Francis, if he heard of it, was probably less distressed than many others.

  The first of the cardinals to fall under the spell of Francis had been the saintly Cardinal John of Saint Paul, who had befriended him when he had first sought audience of the pope, but about this time he also died, and Francis must have mourned for him. Then he made another powerful friend, one whom he kept until the end of his life, Cardinal Ugolino, Bishop of Ostia, a relative of Innocent III. They met at Florence, when the cardinal was sixty years of age and Francis was thirty-five. No two friends could ever have been a greater contrast to each other. The cardinal, though old enough to be Francis’s father, had far greater bodily vigor and comeliness. He was handsome, tall, and strong, fluent and gracious, an able man of affairs and a scholar. Yet these two quickly learned to love each other. Cardinal Ugolino, like Cardinal Saint Paul, was an ascetic at heart and single-minded in his devotion to the Church. Even before he had met Francis he had reverenced the Brothers Minor and seen in them men marked with the Tau. And he was by temperament protective and affectionate so that the simplicity and frailty of Francis made an instant appeal to his good heart. Francis on his side saw in this disciplined, strong, warmhearted man what he just now exceedingly longed for: a wise friend to give him strength and counsel in all the difficulties that beset him. For the order was growing very fast. The first small company of the knights was now an army and as his sons multiplied so did his problems. Increasingly now he turned to Cardinal Ugolino for advice.

  The cardinal, Dominic, and Francis drew now into close friendship with each other. The cardinal carried always in his heart the dying appeal of his kinsman Pope Innocent III, for the cleansing of the world through the purification of the Church, and he looked to Francis and Dominic for help. Dominic’s appeal to Pope Innocent, made at the General Council, had been granted, and he had founded his Order of Preaching Friars. Cardinal Ugolino asked Francis and Dominic to come to him in Rome and opened his heart to them; he wanted to take bishops from the ranks of the two orders, for he thought that there was no better way of fostering holiness in the Church than through the leaven of Franciscan and Dominican bishops. But Francis and Dominic could not agree. They both believed that high office of any sort was contrary to the spirit of their orders, which had been called by God to humility, and that only in obeying the will of God could they be of any service to the Church. They did not convince the cardinal that they were right but as he could not convince them that he was right he had to yield for the moment and let them go.

  They went out into the street together, and Dominic turned around impulsively and caught Francis’s hands. The two men were so at one in their love of God and adoration of his holy will that Dominic had longed that their orders should be one also. But Francis had known that this was not possible. The Dominicans were called to be scholars and in the intellectual sphere fighting men. In years to come they would be called “the dogs of God,” so fiercely did they get on the scent of heresy and track it down. The Franciscans were called to poverty, and in the thought of Francis a truly poor man must not possess the books that are essential to scholarship, nor the hunting instinct that is necessary even on an intellectual warpath. A lover of the Lady Poverty must be lowly in mind as well as station, gentle, peaceable, persuasive. And so he had said no, but with sadness that he must disappoint his friend. Now Dominic cried out again that he wished they could be united, but Francis shook his head. It was not goodbye between them but it was goodbye to the deeper intimacy that the union of their orders would have brought, and Dominic felt something of the bitterness of parting. He begged that Francis would give him the cord that he wore around his waist. Francis hesitated, for he was scared by the reverence in the older man’s voice. Then he unfastened the cord and gave it to him and until the end of his life Dominic wore the Franciscan cord under his Dominican habit.

  The friendship between these two men, and between their orders, is one of the great friendships of history. An artist and a poet have immortalized it. Andrea della Robbia has portrayed the goodbye in the street. He shows the two saints standing facing each other, hands clasped, knowing that they must go their different ways but finding the parting intolerably hard. Dante in the Divine Comedy writes of them together again in the glory of heaven. Dante and Beatrice, having ascended into the sun which is the fourth heaven, find themselves surrounded by a wreath of blessed spirits, the fourth family of God, whose glory passes description. Among them are Francis and Dominic, the two ordained of God to save the Church in her hour of need, so united that

  . . . he tells of both,

  Who one commendeth, which of them soe’er

  Be taken: for their deeds were to one end.

  Their story is told by two of their sons, who share their joy, but such is the courtesy of heaven that it is Saint Thomas Aquinas the Dominican who sings the praises of Francis and his order, and Saint Bonaventure the Franciscan who extols Dominic,

  The loving minion of the Christian faith,

  The hallowed wrestler, gentle to his own,

  And to his enemies terrible. . . . .

  And I speak of him, as the laborer,

  Whom Christ in his own garden chose to be

  His helpmate.

  And so the great circle of adoring saints, the helpmates of Christ, wheels about the sun,

  Voice answering voice, so musical and soft,

  It can be known but where day endless shines.

  Disappointed for the time being of his Franciscan and Dominican bishops, the cardinal still believed it was the friars of the two orders who would call the Church from worldliness to holiness, and believing this he wanted to make Francis known to the new pope, Honorius. He thought it would be an excellent idea if Francis were to preach before Honorius and the papal court, and Francis humbly consented.

  But as the day fixed for the sermon drew near, Ugolino was seized with panic. What would happen? Francis was, to say the least of it, unconventional, and men who yield every moment of their lives to the guidance of the Holy Spirit do sometimes behave in an unexpected manner. The cardinal feared it would not be easy to contain Francis within the narrow path of custom and convention, and if he was not so contained what sort of impression would he make on the new pope? Consumed with anxiety the cardinal did his best. He suggested to Francis that it might be as well to think his sermon out very carefully beforehand, write it down and commit it to memory. Francis, who had hitherto prepared himself for preaching by hours of prayer and adoration, and then trusted to the Holy Spirit for guidance, humbly promised to do what the cardinal wanted. He thought out his sermon, wrote it down, and memorized it, but trusting to his own powers instead of in the Holy Spirit was not natural to him, and he was not happy.

  As the appointed hour drew on, the cardinal was not happy either. Celano says, “The Venerable Lord Bishop of Ostia was in an agony of suspense, praying to God with all his might that the simplicity of the blessed man might not be despised . . . trusting in the mercy of the Almighty, which never fails in time of need those who piously wait upon it.”

  Zero hour came and Francis, barefoot and shabby, stood before Honorius and his cardinals in all their magnificence, as once he had stood before Innocent and his cardinals. But then he had been confident and happy and had spoken out bravely, and now he was white and strained and the words would not come. Cardinal Ugolino redoubled his efforts, praying with yet greater urgency, but still nothing happened, for Francis had forgotten every word of the carefully memorized sermon. The silence lengthened unbearably, and then, slowly, the strain began to grow less. Perhaps Pope Honorius had also begun to pray for Francis, for he was an old and holy man, “very simple and of much good will,” a man so well able to u
nderstand Francis that it is surprising that Cardinal Ugolino should have worried so much about this meeting. He prayed, perhaps, and over the darkness that had fallen upon Francis there came the movement of the Holy Spirit. A little color came into his face and his eyes began to glow as he remembered the God of love whose servant he was. Racking his brains to try and remember his sermon he had forgotten God. Now, the sermon forgotten, he remembered him, and the remembrance filled him with joy and power. He began to speak of the love of God. He had said once to his friars, “So very high and very precious is the love of God that it should never be named save seldom and in great necessity, and with much reverence,” but now he was so lifted out of himself with joy that the words poured from him with the passionate eagerness of a lark singing. Even his feet took wings and began to dance beneath him. To the old pope it was as though fingers plucked at his heartstrings and tears began to trickle down his cheeks, and several of his cardinals wept with him. They wept for the days when they had said with Saint Augustine, “He looked through the lattice of our flesh, and he spake us fair, yea, he set us on fire, and we hasten on his scent.” The years had hardened them, and they had lost their first fervor, but now through Francis they were captured again for Christ.

  2

  IT WAS NOT ONLY the princes of the Church who fell under the spell of Francis; men and women of the world, the nobility of Rome and their ladies, revered him too. The Lady Giacoma di Settesoli was one of Francis’s greatest friends. He knew only two women by sight, he said, and the two were Clare the contemplative, and the practical, delightful Giacoma. They are the Mary and Martha of the story and they came into it at much the same time, for the year when Clare joined the order was the year when Francis first met Giacoma in Rome. She was twenty-five years old then, and she came to him because she was in sorrow and perplexity. Her husband, Gratiano Frangipani, had just died leaving her with two small sons to bring up, and great wealth and large estates to administer, and though she was a woman of strong character, she was in these first days of her grief and loneliness appalled by the prospect. Francis was able to comfort and strengthen her and she made a threefold resolve: to dedicate her life to the upbringing of her sons, the service of the poor, and the worship of God; and splendidly, until the end of her life, she kept her vow.

  When the Third Order came into being Giacoma joined it. She continued to administer her estates as before, and to bring up her sons to play the great part in the world that was waiting for them, but her own life became increasingly simple, humble, and devout, and her house in Rome was always open to the poor and the suffering and all who needed her care. Francis delighted to visit her there. We picture her as capable, hospitable, and vigorous. Francis called her Brother Giacoma because of her almost masculine strength of character, and mother of sons that she was, she was evidently one of those women with whom men feel entirely at their ease, her motherliness laced with a certain astringency, a very great lady with the naturalness and selfless courtesy of all such great ladies. She seems to have been a good cook, for she used to make for Francis an almond sweet cake that is still called after her, and it speaks volumes for her tact and diplomacy that she could actually induce him to enjoy good food.

  Her sense of humor seems to have been equal to the demands he made upon her, even when he presented her with a lamb for a pet. It was his habit to buy lambs destined for the slaughterhouse, the purchase money generally being a cloak given him for his own use, though always on the understanding that he was not likely to keep it for long, and a blessing for the shepherd. That a creature symbolic of the sacrifice of Christ should be slain for food was intolerable to him, but it was a little difficult to know what to do with the lambs afterward, especially as they grew rather quickly into sheep. One lamb Francis kept with him at the Portiuncula, and trained it to go into church with the friars. He told it to be “instant in the divine praises and avoid any occasion of offense to the brethren.” When it heard the brothers chanting it would “bend the knee, bleating before the altar of the Virgin Mother of the Lamb, as though it would feign greet her.” Another he gave to a community of nuns and a third was presented to Brother Giacoma. She trained it so well that if she overslept in the morning, and was in danger of being late for mass, it would butt at her and wake her up, and when she was dressed it would run along to church at her heels. As it grew older she turned it to practical use by shearing off its wool and spinning and weaving the wool into cloth. It was a habit made from the wool of this lamb that was Francis’s shroud when he lay in state upon his bier.

  After his death Giacoma left her Roman home and lived out the rest of her long life at Assisi, hospitable until the end, her house a meeting place for all the faithful friends of Francis. It was she who closed the eyes of Leo when he died. She was buried in the church of San Francesco at Assisi and her inscription reads: Here Giacomo rests, a holy and noble Roman.

  3

  IT HAS BEEN SAID that the closer a man comes to God the more does he become himself. Absorption in the world can blunt a man, rub away the clear outline of his personality, but absorption in God makes him more of an individual. Pebbles lying in clear running water take on an astonishing beauty and shine like separate many-colored jewels. Taken out of their element they look dull and much like each other and are not found again until they are put back where they belong. Francis, absorbed in Christ, was so strikingly individual that he has never been forgotten. From the final union with his Lord on Mount Alvernia he returned more himself than he had ever been. He took no color from the world. In Rome he did not do as the Romans did. The most beautiful of all the stories told of him shows him being himself at a Roman dinner party.

  His host was Cardinal Ugolino, in whose palazzo he was staying. Many knights and nobles were to dine with the cardinal that night and Francis, as the hour of the feast drew on, saw the preparations that were being made. In the kitchen the cooks and scullions were sweating and toiling, preparing the food that they would not eat themselves, and in the banqueting hall other servants were setting the long carved table with the gold and silver dishes, bringing in the platters of wheaten bread, the flagons of wine and dishes of fruit and sweetmeats. Enough food was being prepared to save an army of poor men from starvation, and the light wines and the fresh fruit would have slaked the feverish thirst of many a leper. Francis remembered his brothers. Some had been toiling all day at hard tasks, to be rewarded at the end of the day, if they were lucky, with a handful of dried beans and a bit of rye bread. Others had been unlucky and tired out though they were, had had to take their bowl and beg a few scraps from door to door, or else go hungry to bed. He did not need to remember, because he never for one moment forgot, the Son of God who had not where to lay his head, and he went secretly, none seeing him, out of the palazzo and away into the streets of Rome.

  When the guests assembled he was not there and they had to go in to dinner without him, and the seat of honor next to Cardinal Ugolino, that had been reserved for him, was left empty. The distinguished guests, prelates, knights, and nobles, took their places and presently the luxurious and beautiful entertainment was in full swing. The lights gleamed on the arras and on the splendid garments of the guests, the wine was poured out and the polite hum of conversation rose and fell. Perhaps they did not see Francis when he first came in, moving soundlessly on bare feet, scarcely more substantial than a shadow in his gray habit. He went to the place prepared for him and sat down quietly, placing on the table before him what he had brought with him. He had been to the table of the Lord. He had been begging for scraps at the back doors of Rome, and it was these poor broken bits of food that lay now on the cardinal’s table. Silence fell, and the cardinal was ashamed. Francis, unselfconscious and unaware of any awkwardness in the situation, ate a little of the food that was to him a sacrament of the bounty of God, and then, the old chronicler tells us, “he took of his alms and sent a little to each of the knights and chaplains of my Lord Cardinal on behalf of the Lord God,” and one can
imagine the exquisite gentleness and courtesy with which he did it. There was no more awkwardness. Deeply moved, each man took his scrap of food, the gift of God, with reverence. Some ate it but others put it by to keep in memory of Francis.

  When the guests had gone the cardinal took Francis into his own room and embraced him, but his hospitable heart was still grieved and he said to him, “Why, my most simple brother, hast thou done me this shame today, that coming to my house, which is the home of thy brethren, thou shouldst go begging alms?”

  And Francis explained that he had done it for his brethren’s sake, that he might set them an example of the humility and poverty to which he and they were vowed. And he said also that he had begged alms “in honor of him who when he was Lord of all wished for our sakes to become servant of all, and when he was rich and glorious in his majesty became poor and despised in our humility.”

  And the cardinal said, “My son, do that which is good in thine eyes, since God is with thee, and thou with him.”

  Chapter 11

  The Poor

  In a narrow heart God cannot bide;

  Where the love is great, the heart is wide;

  Poverty, great-hearted, dignified,

  Entertains and welcomes deity.

  Poverty has nothing in her hand,

  Nothing craves, in sea, or sky, or land:

  Hath the universe at her command!

  Dwelling in the heart of liberty.

  JACOPONE DA TODI

  LAUDA LX

  THOUGH FRANCIS WAS AT EASE among the rich he was at home among the poor. He bore proudly, and will bear for all time, the title of El Poverello, the poor man. He had built up his own life, and the life of his order, upon the foundation stone of poverty. His home was the homelessness of the Lady Poverty and his riches her dereliction. It is hard to grasp the passion of his dedication to poverty. It was as deep and strong as his dedication to Christ because in his thought they were never separated. It was Christ in the dereliction of the cross who had taken possession of him in the church of San Damiano, the life of Christ that he shared in his poverty, and Christ himself whom he served in his poor. And so he was determined that there must be no man anywhere who was poorer than he. If he was tramping along the road in the pouring rain, with perhaps a sack that someone had given him around his shoulders as an added protection, and saw a beggar coming along with nothing but his rags, that sack immediately came off him and was given to the beggar, for he said, “I think the great Almsgiver would account it a theft in me did I not give that I wear unto one needing it more.” When he met poor folk carrying burdens he would immediately take them on his own shoulders, though there can have been few of them who were not far more able to carry a heavy weight than he was. He was never known to refuse a beggar. When he was on the road and had nothing whatever to give, not even an old sack, he would tear off a bit of his worn habit and give that rather than say no, and these scraps of his garments were inestimable treasures to those who possessed them. They believed that through them healing came to their sick bodies; certainly healing came to their sick souls through knowing that there was a man in the world ready to pour out his very life for them, and feeling through that knowledge to a dim realization that that was what God had done.