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

  Chapter 16

  The Darkness

  The cross hath lifted

  Love, heaven-gifted,

  Never to let it go:

  And the cross shall take me,

  Lift me, break me,

  For all the world to know.

  JACOPONE DA TODI

  LAUDA LXXXIII

  FOR TWO AND A HALF YEARS Francis continued his active life with his order, increasingly ill, increasingly heartbroken, humbly striving to meet so far as he could the demands his sons made upon him but never yielding to any that seemed to him contrary to the will of God as he saw it and to the vocation to which he believed himself called. Through it all he was courageous, patient, and loving, but those two and a half years were his Gethsemane. He was not broken by them. A weak man breaks when his life’s work is wrested from him and twisted to a semblance that is abhorrent to him, and when his dream has turned to what seems to him an ugliness. But Francis had never supposed that he owned anything, not even his work or his dreams, and in his ability to let go of them he was a strong man; strong too in the knowledge that nothing could take from him the power and glory of prayer and suffering, and that he would be able to offer these for his sons until he died.

  After the chapter of 1221 Elias and his men laid incessant siege to Francis, and the manner of it, and Francis’s response, are summed up in a story told in The Mirror of Perfection. A certain novice wanted to possess a psalter of his own, not one belonging to the community but his special property, and Elias, who had now been accorded the title and authority of minister general, said that he might have it. But he did not want to have it without the approval of Francis and so he waylaid Francis and said to him, “Father, it would be a great solace to me to have a psalter, but though the general has conceded it to me, yet I wish to have it, Father, with thy knowledge.”

  Francis answered, “Charles the Emperor, Roland and Oliver, and all the Paladins and strong men, being mighty in war chasing the infidels with much travail and sweat to the death, had over them notable victory, and at the last themselves did die in battle, holy martyrs for the faith of Christ; but now there are many who would fain receive honors and human praise for the mere telling of the things which those others did.”

  This fiery answer, which all writers, all Giordano da Gianos, should take to themselves with shame, settled the young novice for the moment but a few days later, when Francis was sitting by the fire, he came to him and spoke again of his longing for a psalter of his own. Francis said, “After you have the psalter, you will desire and wish to have a breviary. Then you will sit in your chair, like a great prelate, and say to your brother: ‘Bring me the breviary.’” And taking up some ashes he spread them on his head saying, “I am thy breviary, I am thy breviary,” over and over again, moving his hand around and around upon his head as though he were washing it with the ashes. The novice was so amazed and surprised that Francis had to comfort him. He told him that he too had longed for books but he had prayed about it and God had shown him that it was not his will. “There are so many who willingly rise unto knowledge,” he said to the novice, “that he shall be blessed who makes himself barren for the love of God.”

  But still the novice was not going to give in and some while later, meeting Francis at the Portiuncula, he tried again, and Francis, weary and heartsick, yielded at last and said, “Go and do concerning this what thy minister tells thee.” The novice, triumphant, turned and walked away, but a moment after he heard Francis calling, “Wait for me, brother, wait!” And he came up to him, and said to him, “‘Turn back with me, brother, and show me the place where I said unto thee that thou shouldst do in the matter of the psalter as thy minister should say.’ When therefore they had arrived at the place, blessed Francis kneeled before that brother, and said: ‘Mea culpa, brother, mea culpa, for whosoever will be a Friar Minor should have nothing except a tunic, as the rule concedes to him, and a cord and breeches, and those who are forced by manifest necessity, sandals.’”

  All the difficulties are in this story. The psalter stands for everything for which Elias and his men were fighting. They were determined to have their way but they wanted to have it with Francis’s approval, and that was a thing they could not wring from him. The question of the books was for Francis an especially tormenting one. He knew, and said to the importunate novice, that if his sons spent more and more time reading and writing about the selfless deeds of others they would spend less and less time in performing them, and it was to the ministry of mercy that they were called. And he knew too that men who get too involved in studying books on the science of prayer lose the simplicity and humility without which they cannot pray themselves. The scholarship of his age was a greedy thing. The men of the Middle Ages were intoxicated by the great world of learning that had opened to those among them, the men of drive and ability, who could push their way in. But the majority, all the mass of the suffering peasants, was left outside. There were many humble and holy men among the scholars but there were more of the type of Elias, and they tended to form an aristocracy of scholarship. Intellectual pride was their besetting sin. It was this that Francis feared for his sons. A sense of superiority would separate them forever from the suffering poor, and if that happened they would be like salt that has lost its savor and would no longer be Brothers Minor. But he was not opposed to scholarship as such. He revered men of learning, and he so reverenced the written word that if he saw any scraps of paper with writing on them fluttering about on the road he would gather them up, just as he would have gathered up a flower or a butterfly that it might not be trodden underfoot. The writing spoke to him of the wisdom of God, as the flower and the butterfly of his beauty and grace. He who so loved the beauty of verse, the minstrels’ songs, the cadence of the psalms, would have loved to possess books. “Brother, I likewise was tempted to have books,” he said to the novice. He knew the cost of the sacrifice he asked of his sons, and suffered in asking it. “I am thy breviary,” he said, but even while he spoke he put the ashes on his head in profound humility and performed the symbolic action of washing his head as though in the waters of penitence. God had called him to be an example of poverty to his sons, and had called them to obey and imitate him, but he knew his unworthiness.

  2

  OUT OF THE RANKS of the scholars in his order there rose up one to comfort him. Anthony, the young priest who had prayed beside the tomb of the Moroccan martyrs, and left it to join the order, had made himself “barren for the love of God.” The brothers among whom he lived so quietly had no idea that he was a fine preacher and a man of wide learning. His early days in the order were shadowed by a great disappointment, for his desire to preach Christ to the infidels had been frustrated. Like Francis himself at his first attempt he had been shipwrecked, and then he had been very ill. He came to the chapter of 1221 and was so gentle and withdrawn that when the brothers were being directed to the various provinces where they were to labor he was nearly overlooked altogether. Then the minister provincial of Lombardy noticed the humble young priest, thought he might come in useful and took him under his wing. He could at least speak Latin, and he would be able to say mass for the lay brothers in the hermitages. So Anthony was sent to live in the mountains, at San Paola near Forli, and was useful to the brethren there. He said mass for them and he delighted in unobtrusively doing all the hardest tasks he could find, and he prayed for long hours in the loneliness of the mountains, and no one took much notice of him.

  Then one day at the convent at Forli there was something of an occasion. There was an ordination of priests there and some Dominicans, the dogs of God, were invited to be present as guests. Anthony and the brothers of San Paola were also there, and when the ceremonies were over they all had an evening meal together. When they had eaten, the father guardian of Forli thought the time had come for edification and he asked one of the Dominicans to speak to them. But all the guests excused themselves. Perhaps as scholars and preachers they did not want to appear as though
they were displaying superior powers before the humble Brothers Minor. But the father guardian still thought they should be edified and glancing around the assembled company his eye fell upon Anthony and he commanded him to address them. Anthony, like Ruffino before him on a somewhat similar occasion, implored that he might be excused, but the father guardian, scenting a faint whiff of the forbidden disobedience, insisted, adding kindly, as he saw the distress on the face of the humble young priest, that a few simple words as God should inspire him were all that was required. Anthony stood up and began to speak, and as his quiet voice gathered power a tingling silence held his audience, a silence held within the deep and holy quietness of the mountains where these men were assembled. It was one of the great moments of the Franciscan Order, one of those occasions when a sermon makes history. Anthony was in no sense displaying his great gifts of learning and eloquence, he was incapable of that, but his gifts were of God, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit he gave of them and of himself as well as he could. He finished and sat down in his humble place, glad that it was over.

  But now the obscurity he loved was no longer allowed him, for the new spirit that was in the order believed in using genius in strategic positions. Also it would seem that it is so often the wisdom of God to place his most devoted servants exactly where they least want to be. Their gifts and their personal preferences run counter to each other, and the discipline of being used in a way that is not of their choice preserves their humility. Anthony, the mystic, would have chosen the quiet prayer-life of the mountain hermitages, but he was soon by the command of authority preaching up and down the countryside, pressed upon by the crowds who flocked to hear him, earning for himself by his fiery defense of his faith the title “the hammer of heretics.”

  But he was also in the providence of God used for a gentler purpose, and one more after his own heart. He made more endurable for Francis the reopening of the House of Studies at Bologna and the founding there of a theological school for the Brothers Minor. This had been made possible by the diplomacy of Cardinal Ugolino, who had declared the House of Studies to be the property of the Holy See, not of the Brothers Minor to whom it was merely lent. The scholars among the brothers did not mind to whom the house belonged provided they could go back there, and though Francis must have been deeply distressed there was nothing he could say. It was the Portiuncula Chapter House that belonged to the citizens of Assisi all over again. But Anthony was appointed lecturer at the new school and he proved to Francis that a Brother Minor could be a brilliant scholar and yet remain holy and humble.

  It would be comforting to think that in these years of sorrow Anthony gave Francis hope for the future, when the stormy years of transition should be safely over, and that through this hope he had foreknowledge of the Franciscan missionaries traveling to every corner of the known world, and the harvest they reaped there, and saw the thousands of men in the gray habit toiling in the slums of all the great cities of the world. He would have been so happy to see their hospitals for lepers, the sick, and the old, their orphanages and asylums, and to know that down the centuries whenever the plague broke out, wherever there was misery and death, the beloved gray friars would always be there in the thick of it. Such knowledge would have reconciled him to the scholarship of the order, to the libraries and schools, the trained choirs and the fame of Franciscan music. Whether he knew something of these things or not, he knew that Anthony was destined to be one of the great men of his order, for he wrote to him as “Brother Anthony, my bishop.” But even with Anthony at Bologna he was ceaselessly anxious about the brothers there and wrote to him, “It pleases me that you should read sacred theology to the brethren so long as on account of this study they do not extinguish the spirit of holy prayer as is ordained in the rule.”

  He was several times at Bologna during these years and on the Feast of the Assumption 1222 he preached to almost the whole city, packed in the great piazza. His sermon was described in those words by one who heard him: “I, Thomas, citizen of Spoleto and Archdeacon of the cathedral church of the same city, studying at Bologna in the year 1222, saw Saint Francis preach in the square before the Little Palace, where nearly the whole town was assembled. He spoke first of angels, of men, and of devils. He explained the spiritual natures with such exactness and eloquence that his hearers were astonished that such words could come from the mouth of a man so simple as he was. Nor did he follow the usual course of preaching. His discourse resembled rather one of those harangues that are made by popular orators. At the conclusion, he spoke only of the extinction of hatred, and the urgency of concluding treaties of peace, and compacts of union. His garments were soiled and torn, his person thin, his face pale, but God gave his words unheard-of power. He converted even men of rank, whose unrestrained fury and cruelty had bathed the country in blood; many who were enemies were reconciled. Love and veneration for the saint were universal; men and women thronged round him, and happy were those who could so much as touch the hem of his habit.”

  It is not the picture of a broken man. The spiritual power, the fire and the eloquence are there unchanged.

  3

  “AS IS ORDAINED IN THE RULE,” Francis had said to Anthony, and it was this rule that haunted them all. Francis believed it had been ordained by Christ, therefore he could not alter it. Elias and his following saw it as a great mountain blocking the road to progress. There was a new spirit in the order now. Loss of unity had meant loss of peace and happiness. On all sides there were arguments and recriminations and a loss of discipline. Francis was blamed for it. The new men said the old rule was far too difficult and heroic. It was impossible to keep and Francis by refusing to modify it was only encouraging indiscipline. His faithful sons also blamed him for dealing too gently with his opponents and for allowing power to pass into their hands. His suffering and his patience irked them and they could not see that it was that alone which was keeping the order from open schism. Great desolation fell upon Francis and he wondered if he was indeed to blame. He searched himself for sin. Surely he must have sinned very deeply that this confusion had come upon his sons. Sick and heartbroken he lost his joyousness and humor and began to suffer from scrupulosity. He wondered if his regular visits to Clare and her nuns at San Damiano had been wrong. He decided he must discontinue them, lest they be misconstrued, and he sent a message to Clare to tell her he felt he must not come again.

  Clare thought she had never heard such nonsense, and she sent back a strong protest. The brothers, she said, had promised to look after their sisters in the order. If Francis did not come anymore to minister to the spiritual needs of herself and her nuns he was betraying his trust. She had her way, of course, as she always did, and once more he took the familiar path to San Damiano. But it was a sad meeting. When he came in among them he was not the Francis whom Clare and her sisters had known. They saw him emaciated, bowed down with sorrow, the old light gone from his eyes, his face bearing already the marks of incurable disease. He found that he could not after all talk to them in the old happy way. Instead he sat down on the ground and taking some ashes he sprinkled them around him and on his head. He struggled to speak but when the words came they were those of the Miserere, “Have mercy upon me, O God.” His voice at least was unchanged and went steadily on. “A broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt thou not despise.” He finished the psalm and went away without another word. Doubtless when he had gone Clare and her sisters wept.

  More and more now he withdrew into the lonely places in the mountains, that he might spend his days and nights in prayer. They had wrested his authority from him, many of his sons had forsaken him, but they could not take from him the power of prayer. And he was not entirely alone. The death of Peter Cathanii, and lately of Dominic too, had been among the sorrows of this time, but one or other of the faithful few was always with him, Leo his secretary, Bernard, Ruffino, or Angelo. They could not understand the depth of his grief but they could love him and bear him company. Occasionally bitter lament
ations broke from him, but not often. He found comfort during his last years, when he was so separated from the majority of his sons, in writing to them, and his letters contain no bitter words, only words of love and tenderness, pleading with them to keep the rule, to be loving and humble and obedient.

  One letter which he wrote at this time may have been written to Elias, for it is a plea for love, humility, and mercy, qualities which he knew Elias lacked. It opens gravely, “May the Lord bless thee. I speak to thee as best I can on the subject of the soul.” Then, after speaking of love and humility, it goes on, “and by this I wish to know if thou lovest God and me his servant and thine, to wit: that there be no brother in the world who has sinned, how great soever his sin may be, who after he hath seen thy face shall ever go away without thy mercy, if he seek mercy, and if he seek not mercy, ask thou him if he desires mercy. And if he afterwards appears before thy face a thousand times, love him more than me, to the end that thou mayest draw him to the Lord, and on such ones always have mercy.”

  The discontent which the brothers had felt over the revised rule festered and the Whitsun chapter of 1223 decided that Francis must be asked to rewrite it again. It seems probable that Cardinal Ugolino persuaded Francis that if he could rewrite it in a way that would be acceptable to them, then it could be sanctioned by Pope Honorius and they would have to obey. Francis did what they desired. Through these last years of his life he always did what they asked him to do, unless it went against his conscience, offering to them the humility and loving obedience that he longed to see again in them. He never demanded anything of other men that he did not give himself. He went away into the mountains above the valley of Rieti. Leo as always was with him, and one other brother, Bonizzi. He went to Monte Rainerio where far up the mountainside there was a lonely cavern, the sort of place that he loved. Below it were the woods and a rushing mountain stream and all about it a bird-haunted solitude. The mountain belonged to the Lady Columba, who had a house there. She welcomed Francis courteously to her mountain, sent food every day to the brothers, and left them alone. Though she comes only very briefly into the story she deserves her niche in history.