"Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of the body, from
whom no man escapeth. Woe to him who dieth in mortal sin! Blessed are
they who are found walking by Thy most holy will, for the second
death shall have no power to do them harm.
"Praise ye and bless ye the
Lord, and give thanks unto Him, and serve Him with great
humility."
[Illustration: THE ARMS OF THE
FRANCISCANS.]
FOOTNOTES:
[18] For a true picture of the condition
of Italian towns, torn by strife, decimated by famine, and suffering from
leprosy brought by the crusaders, see Brewer's admirable preface in vol. iv.
of the _Monumenta Franciscana_.
[19] The first tournament took place
at Bologna in 1147.
[20] Folgore di San Gimignano, translated by D. G.
Rossetti.
[21] These were the first troubadours to visit the Italian
courts, driven from Provence by the crusades against the
Albigenses.
[22] A certain Bernardo Moriconi, leaving his brother to
carry on the business at Lucca, then famous for its manufacture of silk
stuffs, came and settled at Assisi where he got the nickname
Bernardone--the big Bernard. Whether in allusion to his person or to his
prosperity, we cannot say, but the family name was lost sight of and his son
was known as Pietro Bernardone.
[23] Celano. _Vita_ I. cap.
1.
[24] Ruskin. _The two paths_: Lecture III.
[25] Celano. _Vita_
I. cap. 2.
[26] "Le vide lamentable de sa vie lui etait tout a coup
apparu; il etait effraye de cette solitude d'une grande ame, dans laquelle il
n'y a point d'autel." Paul Sabatier. _Vie de S. Francois d'Assise_, p.
17.
[27] From a 15th century translation of the will of St. Francis.
See _Monumenta Franciscana_. Chronicles edited by J. S. Brewer vol. iv.
p. 562.
[28] Life of Beato Egidio in the _Little Flowers of St.
Francis_.
[29] Life of Beato Egidio in the _Little Flowers of St.
Francis_.
[30] One of the most beautiful stories in the _Fioretti_
(chapter xxxiv.) recounts how St. Louis, King of France, visited Beato
Egidio at Perugia. The king and the poor friar kneeling together in
the courtyard of the convent, embracing each other like familiar
friends, is a picture such as only Umbrian literature could have left us.
There was absolute silence between the two, yet we are told St.
Louis returned to his kingdom and Egidio to his cell with
"marvellous content and consolation" in their souls.
[31] See _Supra_,
p. 47.
[32] Quoted by Sigonius in his work on the Bishops of Bologna.
_Opera omnia_, v. iii., translated by Canon Knox Little. _Life of St.
Francis of Assisi_, p. 179.
[33] _Speculum Perfectionis_, cap. cv.,
edited by Paul Sabatier.
[34] _Fioretti_, cap. xiii.
[35] To
franciscan influence must surely be traced the rise of the Flagellants at
Perugia in 1265.
[36] See _Histoire de Sainte Elizabeth_, Comte de
Montalembert, pp. 71, 72.
[37] It is related that when in 1216 some
Franciscans went on a mission to Germany the only word they knew was "Ja,"
which they used upon every occasion. In one town they were asked if they were
heretics preaching a rival faith to catholicism, and as they continued to
say "Ja, Ja," the citizens threw them into prison, and after beating
them cruelly drove them ignominiously from the country. The account
they gave of their experience to the other friars at Assisi created such
a panic that they were often heard in their prayers to implore God
to deliver them from the barbarity of the Teutons.
[38] Celano. _Vita_
I. cap. xxi.
[39] Paul Sabatier. _Vie de S. Francis d'Assise_, p.
205.
[40] _Vita di S. Francesco_, p. 76. Edizione Amoni (1888.
Roma).
[41] Celano, a learned nobleman from Celano in the Abruzzi, joined
the Order in 1215, and gives by far the most charming and vivid account
of St Francis, for besides knowing him well he had the gift of writing
in no ordinary degree.
[42] _Vita_ I. cap. xxvii.
[43] _Vita di
S. Francesco_, da S. Bonaventura, p. 148, Edizione Amoni.
[44] This
was a small chapel built for St. Francis by Count Orlando, and must not be
confounded with the church of the same name near Assisi.
[45] The
earnest wishes of the saint are to this day carried out by faithful friars
who, even through the terrible winter months, live at La Vernia, suffering
privation and cold with cheerfulness. At midnight a bell calls them to sing
matins in the chapel of the Stigmata connected with the convent by an open
colonnade, down which the procession files, following a crucifix and
lanterns. When the service has ceased, the monks flit like ghosts behind the
altar while the lights are extinguished and in the gloom comes the sound of
clashing chains. For an hour they chastise themselves: then the torches
are relit, the chanting is resumed, and calmly they pass down the
corridor towards their cells. Moonlight may stream into the colonnade
across the dark forms, or gusts of wind drive the snow in heaps before
them, but the chanting is to be heard, and the monotonous cries of _ora
pro nobis_ break the awful solitude of night throughout the year upon
the mountain of La Vernia.
[46] Here reference is made to the
Portiuncula, near Assisi.
[47] The Sasso Spicco, which still can be seen
at La Vernia, is a block of rock rising high above the mountain ridge, and
seems to hang suspended in the air. It forms a roof over dark and cavernous
places where St. Francis loved to pray, often spending his nights there
with stones for his bed.
[48] The _Fioretti_ relates that once while
St. Francis was praying on the edge of a precipice, not far from the spot
where he had received the Stigmata, suddenly the devil appeared in terrible
form amidst the loud roar of a furious tempest. St. Francis, unable to flee
or to endure the ferocious aspect of the devil, turned his face and
whole body to the rock to which he clung; and the rock, as though it
had been soft wax, received the impress of the saint and sheltered
him. Thus by the aid of God he escaped.
[49] _Speculum Perfectionis_,
cap. c., edited by Paul Sabatier.
[50] St. Francis composed this verse
later on the occasion of a quarrel which arose between the Bishop of Assisi
and the Podesta. The last couplet was added at the Portiuncula while he was
on his death-bed.
CHAPTER III
_The Carceri,
Rivo-Torto and Life at the Portiuncula_
"O beata solitudo, O
sola beatudine."
These three places near Assisi, so intimately
associated with St. Francis, were in a way emblematic of the various stages
in the rise and growth of his young community, and we shall see that the
saint went from one to the other, not by chance, but with a settled
purpose in his mind. The Carceri he kept as a something apart from,
and outside his daily life; it was a hermitage in the strict sense of
the word, where, far from the sound of any human voice, he could come
and live a short time in isolated communion with God. As his
followers increased, and the Order he had founded with but a few
brethren developed even in its first years into a great army, we can
easily understand the longing for solitude which at times became too
strong to be resisted, for his nature was well fitted for the hermit's
life, and it called him with such persistence to the woods among the
flowers and the birds he loved, that had he been less tender for
the sufferings of others, more blind to the ills of the Church, it
is possible that the whole course of events might have been
altered. Giotto would not have been called to Assisi, or if he had been,
the legends told to him by the friars might not have inspired him to
paint such master-pieces as he has left us in the Franciscan Basilica;
and we should now be the poorer because St. Francis had chosen
seven hundred years ago to live in an Etruscan tomb at Orte, or in a
grotto on Mount Subasio. So much depended, not only upon what St.
Francis achieved, but on the way in which he chose to work. Who therefore
can tell how much we owe to the little mountain retreat of the
Carceri, where, spending such hours of wondrous peace surrounded by all that
he most cherished in nature, the saint could refresh himself and gain
new strength for long periods of arduous labour among
men.
[Illustration: HERMITAGE OF THE CARCERI]
The Carceri came
into the possession of St. Francis through the generosity of the Benedictines
who, until his advent, had held unlimited sway in Umbria. Many churches, and
we may say, almost all the hermitages of the surrounding country belonged to
them. But their principal stronghold, built in the eleventh century, stood on
the higher slopes of Mount Subasio, while the Carceri, lying a little
to the west, was used by them probably as a place of retreat when
wearied of monastic life. Both monastery and hermitage seem to have
been quiet enough, and we only occasionally hear of the Benedictine
monks starting off on a visit to some hermit of renowned sanctity, or
going upon some errand of mercy among the peasants in the valley, whom
they often surprised by marvellous though somewhat aimless miracles
wrought for their edification. Then early in the fourteenth century
these hermit monks of Mount Subasio suddenly found themselves in the
midst of the fighting of a mediæval populace, for the Assisans, not slow
to discover the great military importance of the Benedictine Abbey, wished
to possess it. When the struggle between Guelph and Ghibelline was at its
height, the monks were driven to take refuge in the town, while their home
was taken possession of by the exiled party who used it as a fortress whence
they could sally forth and harass the eastern approach to Assisi. Perpetual
skirmishes took place beneath its walls until the roving adventurer Broglia
di Trino, who had made himself master of the town in 1399, in a solemn
council held at the Rocca Maggiore issued an edict that the Monastery of St.
Benedict was to be razed to the ground, determining thus to deprive the
turbulent nobles and their party of so sure a refuge in times of civil
war.
The solid walls and fine byzantine columns of what once was the
most celebrated abbey in Umbria now remain much as in the mediæval days
of their wreckage, and, until a few years ago when some repairs were made,
the church was open for the mountain birds to nest in, and wild animals used
it as their lair.
But both church and monastery stood proudly upon the
mountain height above the plain when St. Francis, then the young mendicant
looked upon by many as a madman, would knock at the gates, and the abbot
followed by his monks, came out to listen to the humble requests he so
often had to make. These prosperous religious most generously patronised
St. Francis in the time of his obscurity, giving him the chapel of
the Portiuncula, and later (the date is uncertain but some say in
1215) they allowed him to take possession of the still humbler chapel
and huts of the Carceri. Even to call such shelters huts is giving
them too grand a name, for they were but caverns excavated in the
rock, scattered here and there in a deep mountain gorge. They can still
be seen, unchanged since the days of St. Francis save for the tresses
of ivy growing thick, like a curtain, across the entrance, for now
there are none to pass in and out to pray there.
Even the attempt to
describe the loneliness and discomfort of this hermitage seems to strike
terror into the hearts of later franciscan writers, who no longer caring to
live in caves, only saw Dantesque visions when they thought of these arid,
sunburnt rocks, rushing torrents and wild wastes of mountains which even
shepherds never reached. But luckily in those days there was one Umbrian who
loved such isolated spots; and the charm of that silence, born of the
very soul of Francis and guarded jealously by nature herself during
long centuries in memory of him, now tempts us up the mountain side upon
a pilgrimage to the one place where his spirit still lives in all
its primitive vigour and purity.
The road leading to the Carceri[51]
from the Porta Cappucini passes first through rich corn fields and olive
groves, but as it skirts round Mount Subasio towards the ravine it becomes a
mere mountain track. Only here and there, where peasants have patiently
scraped away the stones, grows a little struggling corn, while small hill
flowers nestle between the rocks unshaded even by olive trees; the colour of
a stray Judas tree, or a lilac bush in bloom, only makes the
landscape seem more barren and forlorn. Looking upon the road to Spello,
winding down the hill through luxuriant fields of indian corn and
olive groves, with the oak trees spreading their still fresher green
over the vineyards of the plain, we feel that this pathway to the
Carceri is something novel and unlike anything at Assisi which we
have hitherto explored. Just as we are marvelling at its loveliness,
a sudden turn brings Assisi once more in view, and the sight we get of it
from here carries us straight back to the days of St. Francis; for the great
basilica and convent are hidden by the brow of the hill, and what we now see
is exactly what he looked upon so often as he hastened from Assisi to his
hermitage, or left it when he was ready to take up the burden of men's lives
once more. The old walls, looking now much as they did after a stormy battle
with Perugia, stretch round the same rose-tinted town, which, strangely
enough, time has altered but slightly--it is only a little more toned in
colour, the Subasian stone streaked here and there with deeper shades of
yellow and pink, while the castle is more ruined, rearing itself less proudly
from its green hill-top than in earlier days of splendour. But charming as
the view of the town is, we quickly leave it to watch the changes of light
and colour in the valley and on the wide-bedded Tescio as it twists
and turns in countless sharp zig-zags till we lose it where it joins
the Tiber--there where the mist rises. We might travel far and not find
so fascinating a river as the Tescio; only a trickle of water it is
true, but sparkling in the sunshine like a long flash of lightning
which has fallen to earth and can find no escape from a tangle of fields
and vineyards.[52] Then our road turns away again from the glowing
valley shimmering in the haze of a late May afternoon, and mounting
ever higher we plunge into the very heart of the Assisan
mountain, uncultivated, wild, colourless and yet how strangely
beautiful.
Another half mile brings us round the mountain side to a
narrow gorge, and the only thing in sight except the ilex trees is an arched
doorway with a glimpse, caught through the half open gate, of a
tiny courtyard. A step further on and we find ourselves standing amidst
a cluster of cells and chapels seeming as if they hung from the bare rocks
with nothing to prevent them falling straight into the depths of the ravine;
and the silence around is stranger far than the mountain solitude. Surely
none live here, we think, when suddenly a brown-clothed friar looks round the
corner of a door, and without waste of time or asking of questions beckons us
to follow, telling rapidly as he goes the story of each tree, rock, cell and
shrine.
Crossing two or three chapels and passing through a trap-door and
down a ladder, we reach a narrow cave-like cell where St. Francis used
to sleep during those rare moments when he was not engaged in prayer.
As at La Vernia this "bed" was scooped out of the rock, and a piece
of wood served him as a pillow. Adjoining is an oratory where the crucifix
the saint always carried with him is preserved. The doors are so narrow and
so low that the smallest person must stoop and edge in sideways. From these
underground caves it is a joy to emerge once more into the sunlight, and one
of the delightful surprises of the place is to step straight out of the
oppressive darkness of the cells into the ilex wood, with the banks above and
around us glowing with sweet-scented cyclamen, yellow orchids, and
long-stemmed violets. It is not surprising that St. Francis often left his
cell to wander further into these woods when the birds, as though they had
waited for his coming, would gather from all sides and intercept him just as
he reached the bridge close to the hermitage. While they perched upon
an ilex tree (which is still to be seen), he stood beneath and talked
to them as only St. Francis knew how. His first sermon to the birds
took place at Bevagna, but at the Carceri he was continually
holding conversations with his little feathered brethren. This perhaps
was also where he held his nocturnal duet with the nightingale, which
was singing with especial sweetness just outside his cell. St.
Francis called Brother Leo to come also and sing and see which would
tire first, but the "little Lamb of God" replied that he had no
voice, refusing even to try. So the saint went forth alone to the
strange contest, and he and the bird sang the praises of God all through
the darkest hours of the night until, quite worn out, the saint was
forced to acknowledge the victory of Brother Nightingale.
Very
different is the story of his encounter with the tempting devil whom he
precipitated by his prayers into the ravine below; the hole through which the
unwelcome visitor departed is still shown outside the saint's cell. Devils do
not play a very prominent part in the story of the first franciscans, but
this mountain solitude seems to have so excited the imaginations of later
chroniclers that yet another story of a devil belongs to the Carceri, and is
quaintly recounted in the _Fioretti_. This time he appeared to Brother Rufino
in the form of Christ to tempt him from his life of holiness. "O Brother
Rufino," said the devil, "have I not told thee that thou shouldst not
believe the son of Pietro Bernardone?... And straightway Brother Rufino
made answer: 'Open thy mouth that I may cast into it filth.' Whereat
the devil, being exceeding wroth, forthwith departed with so furious
a tempest and shaking of the rocks of Mount Subasio, which was hard
by, that the noise of the falling rocks lasted a great while; and
so furiously did they strike one against the other in rolling down
that they flashed sparks of terrific fire in all the valley, and at
the terrible noise they made St. Francis and his companions came out
of the house in amazement to see what strange thing was this; and still is
to be seen that exceeding great ruin of rocks."
Close to the spot
rendered famous by the devil's visits a bridge crosses the gorge of a great
torrent, which, threatening once to destroy the hermitage, was miraculously
dried up by St. Francis, and now only fills its rocky bed when any public
calamity is near. From it a good view is obtained of the hermitage, but
perhaps a still better is to be had from under the avenue of trees a little
beyond, on the opposite side of the deep ravine whence the groups of hovels
are seen to hang like a honeycomb against the mountain side, so tightly
set together that one can hardly distinguish where the buildings begin
and the rock ends.
The ilex trees grow in a semicircle round this
cluster of cells and caverns, and high above it all rises a peak of Mount
Subasio, grey as St. Francis' habit, with a line of jagged rocks on the
summit which looks more like the remains of some Umbrian temple of
almost prehistoric days than the work of nature.
The sides of this
mountain ravine approach so near together that only a narrow vista of the
plain is obtained, blue in the summer haze, with no village or even house in
sight. It would be difficult to find a place with the feeling of utter
solitude so unbroken, and as we realised that these friars lived here nearly
all their life, many not even going to Assisi more than once in five years,
we said to one of them: "How lonely you must be," and he, as though recalling
a time of struggle in the world, answered: "Doubtless there are better things
in the town, but here, at the Carceri, there is
peace."
[Illustration: THE CARCERI WITH A VIEW OF THE BRIDGE]
It
is the hermit's answer; but now the need of such lives has long since passed
away, and even St. Francis, living at the time when the strain of perpetual
warfare, famine, pestilence and crime, created a fierce craving for solitude
in the lives of many, realised that a hermitage must only be a place to rest
in for a while--not to live in. His anxiety to keep his Order from becoming a
contemplative one is shown in the following rule he carefully thought out for
his disciples. "Those religious who desire to sojourn in a hermitage
are to be at the most three or four. Two are to be like mothers having
a son. Two are to follow the life of a Martha, the other the life of
a Mary." Then they were to go forth again strenuously to their work abroad
and give place to others in search of rest and peace.
But after the death
of St. Francis the Carceri gradually lost its primitive use, and the
principal person who entirely changed its character was St. Bernardine of
Siena who in 1320 made many alterations and additions, building a larger
chapel, adding cells and a kitchen, but so small, remarks a discontented
franciscan chronicler, that it barely held the cooking utensils. Although we
can no longer call it a hermitage, the Carceri became the type of an
ideal franciscan convent such as Francis dreamed of for his followers
when he went to live at the Portiuncula, and such it has remained to
this day. For certainly the place, as left by St. Bernardine, would
have been approved of by the first franciscans as a dwelling-place,
but those of later years can only tell us of its discomforts. Here is
a graphic description of its primeval simplicity which very
nearly corresponds to its present state: "It were better called a grotto
with six lairs; one sees but the naked rock untouched by the chisel,
all rough and full of holes as left by nature; those who see it for
the first time are seized with extraordinary fear on climbing the
ladder leading to the dormitory, at each end of which are other
poor buildings, added by the religious according as need arose for the
use of the friars, who do not care to live as hermits did in the
olden times. The refectory is small, and can contain but few friars;
a brother guardian made an excavation, of sufficient height and breadth in
the rock, and added thereto a table around which can sit other six religious,
so that those who take their places at this new table are huddled up in the
arched niche which forms a baldaquin above their heads. There is also a
little common room which horrifies all beholders, wherein is lit a fire, for
besides being far inside the rocky mass it is gloomy beyond description by
reason of the dense smoke always enclosed therein, this is a lively cause to
the religious of reflection on the hideousness and obscurity of the darkness
of hell; in lieu of receiving comfort from the fire the poor
friars generally come out with tears in their eyes." To somewhat atone
for these discomforts they possessed a fountain, raised, as we are
told, by the prayers of St. Francis, which never ran dry, "a miracle God
has wished to perpetuate for the glory of His faithful servants and
the continual comfort of the monks."
The crucifixion in the chapel
built by St. Bernardine adjoining the choir, is said to have been painted by
his orders. The artistic merits of the fresco are questionable, but connected
with it is a legend possibly invented by some humorous member of the
franciscan brotherhood in order to point a moral to his companions. "Here,"
says a chronicler, "is adored that most marvellous crucifixion, so
famous in religion; it is well known to have spoken several times to
the devout Sister Diomira Bini of the Third Order of St. Francis and
a citizen of Assisi; and in our own times, in the last century
(the seventeenth) it was seen by Brother Silvestro dello Spedalicchio
to detach itself from the cross, and with most gentle slaps on the
face, warn a worshipper to be reverent and vigilant while praying in
this His Sacred Oratory."
In a small wooden cupboard in the chapel,
according to an inventory made two hundred years ago, are preserved some
relics, a few of which we have unfortunately not been able to identify. Part
of the wooden pillow used by St. Francis, and a piece of the Golden Gate
through which our Lord passed into Jerusalem, are still here, but the hair
of the Virgin, and, strangest of all, some of the earth out of which
God created Adam, are no longer to be found!
* *
* * *
Ten or twelve friars continued to live at the Carceri
for a few years after the death of St. Bernardine; some begged their daily
bread from the villagers in the valley, others dug in the tiny garden at the
foot of the ravine where a few vegetables grew, and two always remained
at the convent to spin the wool for the habits of the religious. But
soon wearying of the life they went to live at other convents, and
the place passed away from the franciscans into the possession of
various sects, among others to the excommunicated Fraticelli. In 1415 it
was given back to the Observants, and Paolo Trinci, who had done much
to reform the Order, persuaded some friars to live once more at
the deserted hermitage. Again the Carceri became such an ideal
franciscan convent that many came from afar to visit it, and there is a
strange story of how a "woman monk" found a home and died here in the
middle of the fifteenth century.
"Beata Anonima," a chronicler
recounts, "being already a Cistercian nun in the convent of S. Cerbone of
Lucca at the time of the siege of that city by the Florentines, when the said
nuns, for valid reasons, were transferred to the convent of Sta. Christina
inside the city. Now this most fervent servant of God took this opportune
time and fled by stealth, disguised as a man, and went, or rather flew, to
Assisi; there, fired with an ardent desire to fight under the
seraphic standard, she breathlessly climbed the steep slopes of Mount
Subasio, and having found the horrible cavern of Santa Maria delle
Carceri fervently entreated those good Fathers to admit her amongst them
and to bestow on her their sacred habit, for which her longing
was extreme. At length, having overcome all resistance, believing her
to be a man as appeared from her dress, and not a woman which in
reality she was, they admitted her to the convent and gave her the habit
of religion." She edified all by the holiness of her life and the
rigid penances she performed, but her health soon suffered and only upon
her death-bed, surrounded by the friars chanting the psalms for the
dying, the Blessed Anonima confessed to the fraud she had practised in
order to dwell in the hermitage rendered so dear because of the memory
of the Poverello d'Assisi.
RIVO-TORTO[53]
A straight and
stony road, the old Roman one, now overgrown in many parts with grass and
trails of ivy and bordered by mulberry and oak trees, leads out of the Porta
Mojano to two little chapels in the plain. Set back from the main road in the
midst of the fields few people find them, and the peasants know nothing of
their story and can only tell of a miraculous well in which a youthful saint
met his death. When his body was brought to the surface a lily had grown
from his mouth and upon its petals was written in letters of gold the
one word, _Veritas_, for he had died in the cause of truth. Since then,
as the peasants recount with pride, many come from afar to drink of
the waters of this well for it cures every ill. It is over-grown
with ferns and close by stands an ancient sarcophagus where the
children sit to eat their midday meal. A piece of old worn sculpture
still ornaments the chapel of the young martyr, and the feeling of the
place is very charming, but the pilgrim who comes to Assisi to visit
St. Francis, has a different picture to recall with another kind of
beauty belonging to it than that of holy wells and flowering banks
and meadows.
It is difficult, when looking on San Rufino d'Arce, with
its cluster of vine-shaded peasant houses, and then on Santa Maria
Maddalena, narrow windowed, the small apse marking it as a primitive
Umbrian chapel of the fields, to realise that in the Middle Ages this was
a leper village separated from Assisi by a little more than a mile of open
country. And yet here, without doubt, we have Rivo-Torto where, even before
his famous interview with Innocent III, St. Francis had stayed with those
three first Assisan companions, Bernard di Quintavalle, Peter Cataneo and
Egidio. Then in the autumn of 1210, when he returned from Rome after the rule
of poverty had been sanctioned by the Church, but before he was ready to
begin his mission as preacher, he came to live among the lepers, forming with
his disciples a little family which we may call the beginning of a
first franciscan settlement.
The leper village was divided according
to the social rank of the outcasts, the richer living together near the
chapel of Sta. Maria Maddalena and forming quite a community with the right
of freely administering their own goods. As M. Sabatier observes, it
was therefore not "only a hospital, but almost a little town near the
city with the same social distinctions of classes."
Those tended by
St. Francis were the poorest of the lepers, whose wretched hovels lay near
the chapel of San Rufino d'Arce; and Celano must be referring to this
settlement when he tells us how Francis in his early days, even if he chanced
to look down from Assisi upon the houses of the lepers in the plain, would
hold his nostrils with his hand, because his horror of them was so
great.
But as the grace of God touched his heart, making him take pity
upon all things weak and suffering, he turned the force of his
strong nature to overcoming this repugnance, and there is a beautiful
story telling of the first victory gained shortly after his
conversion. While riding one day near Assisi he met a leper, and filled
with disgust and even fear at the sight, his first impulse was to turn
his horse round, but, remembering his new resolutions to follow
the teaching of Christ, he went forward to meet the poor man, and
even kissed the hand extended to him for alms. "Then," says
St. Bonaventure, "having mounted his horse, he looked around him over
the wide and open plain, but the leper was nowhere to be seen. And
Francis being filled with wonder and gladness, devoutly gave thanks to
God, purposing within himself to proceed to still greater things
than this." Certainly the event heralded a life of holiness, and was
the means of rousing his latent energies and the feelings
for self-sacrifice which drove him from the wild and solitary places
he loved into the very midst of the world, there to work strenuously,
in every part of Italy, at first among lepers and then among the
wealthy, the ignorant and the sorrowful.
For the life at Rivo-Torto
led by "these valiant despisers of the great and good things of this world"
we cannot do better than turn to the Three Companions (Brothers Masseo,
Ruffino and Leo) who knew by personal experience the hardships and roughness
of the place. Feelingly they describe: "a hovel, or rather a cavern abandoned
by man; the which place was so confined that they could hardly sit down to
repose themselves. Many a time they had no bread, and ate nought but turnips
which they begged for here and there in travail and in anguish. On the beams
of the poor hut the man of God wrote the names of the brethren, so that whoso
would repose or pray might know his place and not disturb, by reason of the
cramped and limited space in the small hovel, the quietude of the night."
Even the appearance of Otto IV, close to their hut seems in no way to have
disturbed the peaceful course of their lives, but only gave St. Francis
the opportunity of bestowing a timely warning upon the Emperor.
Celano, ever delighting in the picturesque details of ceremonies and
pageants, tells us how "there came at that time with much noise and pomp
the great Emperor on his way to take the terrestrial crown of the
Empire; now the most holy father with his companions being in the said
house near the road where the cavalcade was passing, would neither go out
to see it, nor permit his brethren to go, save one, whom he
commanded fearlessly to announce to Otto that his glory would be
short-lived."
Thus, if the tale be true, a German Emperor was the first
to listen to Francis' message to a mediæval world sunk in the love of
earthly things, and who knows whether the saint's words did not come back
to Otto again in after years.
The Penitents of Assisi only remained
until the spring at Rivo-Torto, for even during those few months' sojourn
among the lepers their numbers had so increased that it became necessary to
think of some surer abode. One day St. Francis called the brethren to tell
them how he had thought of obtaining from one of his various kind friends
in Assisi, a small chapel where they could peacefully say their
Hours, having some poor little houses for shelter close by built of
wattle and mud.
His speech was pleasing to the brethren, and so,
following the master they loved and trusted, all went to dwell at the
Portiuncula, where, as we shall see, a new life was to begin for
them.
THE PORTIUNCULA
"Holy of Holies is this Place of
Places, Meetly held worthy of surpassing honour! Happy
thereof the surname, 'Of the Angels,' Happier yet the name, 'The
Blessed Mary.'
Now, a true omen, the third name
conferreth 'The Little Portion' on the Little Brethren,
Here, where by night a presence oft of Angels Singing sweet hymns
illumineth the watches." (_The Mirror of Perfection_, translated by
Sebastian Evans.)
Those who want to realise the charm of the Portiuncula
and of the memories that cling about it, must try to forget the great
church which shuts out from it the sunlight, and with the early
chroniclers as their guides, call up the image of St. Francis with his
first disciples who in an age of unrest came here to seek for
peace.
Make your pilgrimage in the springtime or in the early summer,
when pink hawthorn and dogroses are flowering in every hedge and the
vines fill the valley with a delicate green light. Looking at cities
and villages so purely Umbrian, some spread among cornfields close to
a swift clear river, others set upon heights which nearly touch the sky on
stormy days, we forget that beyond these hills and mountains encircling the
big valley of Umbria stretch other lands as fair. We forget, because it is a
little world which during long centuries has been set apart from all else,
and where man has but completed the work of nature herself. During the long
hours of a summer's day, when the sense of remoteness in the still plain is
most intense, it brings to us, as nothing else can ever do, some feeling of
that early time when four hermits came from Palestine and found a quiet
retreat in the oak forests of Assisi.
It was in the year 352, as St.
Cyril, Patriarch of Jerusalem, relates, when a cross had been seen stretched
from Calvary to the Mount of Olives and to shine more brightly than the sun,
that four holy men, impelled by a feeling that some great crisis was at hand,
determined to visit the shrines of Rome. Having performed their devotions
and offered many precious relics to Pope Liberius, they expressed a
great desire to find some hermitage where, each in a silent cell, they
could meditate upon the marvellous things they had seen in the Eternal
City. The Pope gave them most excellent advice when he told them to go
to the Spoletan valley. With his sanction to choose any part of it
they liked, they passed over the mountains dividing Umbria from
the Campagna, and by many towns until, when about a mile from Assisi,
they determined to build their dwellings in the plain, thinking, as
indeed they might, to find no other spot so suited for a quiet retreat.
Close to four huts of rough hewn stone and brushwood they erected a
tiny chapel with a pent roof and narrow window which, perhaps in memory
of their native valley, they dedicated to St. Mary of Jehosaphat.
But after a few years, forsaking the life of hermits, they again took
up their staves and returned home to Palestine by way of the
Romagna, leaving beneath the altar of the chapel they had built a relic of
the Virgin's sepulchre.
[Illustration: SIDE DOOR OF THE PORTIUNCULA
BUILT BY ST. BENEDICT]
At different times other devout hermits, charmed
by the lonely chapel, took possession of it for a time, but it was often
deserted for many years. Its preservation is due to St. Benedict who, passing
through Umbria during the early part of the sixth century, was inspired
to restore the ruined chapel and dwell near it for awhile. He not
only repaired the walls, but built the two large round arched doors we
see to this day, and which many declare to be quite out of proportion
to the rest of the building, but their unusual size is accounted for by a
charming legend. Once when St. Benedict was praying in the chapel he saw a
marvellous vision as he knelt wrapt in ecstasy. A crowd of people were
praying around him to St. Francis, singing hymns of praise and calling for
mercy on their souls, while outside still greater multitudes waited for their
turn to come and pray before the shrine. St. Benedict, understanding from
this that a great saint would one day be honoured here, made the two doors in
the chapel, and made them large enough for many to pass in and out at a time.
Thus was the feast of the "Pardon of St. Francis" prepared for some seven
hundred years too soon.
St. Benedict obtained from the Assisans the
gift of a small plot of ground near the sanctuary, which suggested to him the
name of St. Mary of the Little Portion--Sta. Maria della Portiuncula. When a
few years later St. Benedict founded his famous order at Monte Cassino, he
did not forget the Umbrian chapel he had saved from ruin, and sent some
of his monks to live there and to minister among the people. Like
the first hermits they lived in poor huts, saying their Hours in
the little chapel, until in the eleventh century they built a
large monastery and church upon the higher slopes of Mount Subasio to
the east of Assisi, and the Portiuncula was again deserted. But
although no one lived near, and mass was never celebrated there, it
still remained in the keeping of the benedictines who occasionally must
have seen to its repair, and thus preserved it for the coming of
St. Francis.
* * * * *
It has
been suggested to me that the spot selected by the four holy pilgrims in the
fourth century may have been even then the site of a sacred shrine, for the
custom of erecting tabernacles over the graves of distinguished persons
reaches back to very early times. Originally designed as a mortuary cell such
a structure might, being duly oriented, come to be used as a chapel for
service.
The subject of "Sepulchral Cellæ" will be found treated of by
the late Sir Samuel Fergusson[54] in a memoir in which he figures some of
the burial vaults and early oratories of Ireland, some of which are
in shape identical with Sta. Maria della Portiuncula, with the same
pent roof, round arched door, and perfectly plain walls. A building
thus erected over a grave was called _Porticulus_, and any who pillaged
"a house made in form of a basilica over a dead person" had to pay
a fine.
From an archæological point of view there is much to be
desired in the published descriptions of the Portiuncula. A great part of
its exterior walls is now covered with frescoes which hide all detail,
but perhaps a minute examination of the interior walls might
reveal portions of the foundations built upon by St. Benedict, and
we sincerely hope that these few words may attract attention to
so interesting a subject.
But even if the shrine said to have been
built by the hermits from Palestine for Our Lady's Girdle turns out to have
been an ancient tomb, the later legends are by no means destroyed. It is not
unlikely that St. Benedict, attracted as much by lonely places as St.
Francis, took possession of the Umbrian tomb, and perhaps little thinking
what it was, rebuilt and used it as a chapel. Whatever may be the
true story, it is very certain that the Portiuncula, from earliest
times, has possessed a strange attraction for all who passed by, each
one thinking a tiny chapel situated so charmingly in the woods,
within sight, though not within sound, of the Umbrian towns, to be a
perfect spot for prayer.
The country people treasure the legend that
Madonna Pica often came to pray at the Portiuncula, and through the
intercession of the Blessed Virgin obtained a son after seven years of
waiting, and this son of prayer and patience was St. Francis of
Assisi.
Half ruined and neglected as the chapel was, Francis learned,
even as quite a child, to love it, and kneeling therein by his mother's
side would pray with all the fervour of his childish faith. Later in
life when he had turned from the mad follies of his youth to follow in
the footsteps of Christ, he remembered the shrine he had loved
in childhood, and would pass many nights there in prayer and
bitter meditation upon the Passion. At last touched by the sight of
its crumbling walls, he set himself the task of repairing them, working
so busily with stones and mortar that the chapel soon regained its
former simple beauty. The Benedictines of Mount Subasio, touched by
his ungrudging labour and piety, arranged with an Assisan priest
to celebrate mass at the Portiuncula from time to time, and this fact drew
the young saint there still oftener.
Then followed his time of ministry
among the lepers of San Rufino d'Arce, when day by day so many disciples came
to enlist in this new army of working beggars that the little hut in the
leper-village could no longer hold them, and Francis had to think of some
means of housing the brethren, and obtaining, what he had often desired, a
chapel wherein they could say the Hours. (The saint, we may be sure,
always said his office in the woods.) But evidently he had no
particular place in his mind, not even his beloved Portiuncula, for he went
first to his friend Guido, Bishop of Assisi, and then to the canons of
San Rufino to ask if they could help him. They only answered that they
had no church to dispose of, and could offer no advice upon the
subject. Then sorrowfully, like a man begging from door to door, St.
Francis climbed Mount Subasio to lay his request in piteous terms before
the benedictine abbot, where he met with more success. Brother Leo
tells us that the abbot was "moved to pity, and after taking counsel
with his monks, being inspired by divine grace and will, granted unto
the Blessed Francis and his brethren the church of St. Mary of the
Little Portion, as being the smallest and poorest church they possessed.
And the abbot said to the Blessed Francis, 'Behold Brother, we grant
what thou desirest. But should the Lord multiply thy brotherhood we
will that this place shall be the mother-house of thy
Order.'"[55]
With a willing heart Francis promised what the abbot asked,
and further insisted upon paying rent for the Portiuncula, because
he wished his followers always to bear in mind the point of his
rule, which he so often dwelt upon, namely, that they owned no
property whatever, but were only in this world as pilgrims. So every year
two of his brethren brought to the gate of the benedictine monastery
a basket full of roach caught in the Chiaggio which flows at no
great distance from the Portiuncula, and the abbot, smiling at
the simplicity of Francis, who had imagined yet another device
for humility, gave back a vessel full of oil in exchange for the gift
of fish.[56]
With great rejoicing St. Francis set to work building
cells of a most simple pattern, with walls of wattle and dab, and thatched
with straw, each brother inscribing his name upon a portion of the mud floor
set apart for him to rest in. "And no sooner had they come to live
here," writes Brother Leo, "than the Lord multiplied their number day by
day, and the sweet scent of their good name spread marvellously
abroad throughout all the Spoletan valley, and in many parts of the
world."
It was thus that St. Mary of the Little Portion, henceforth to be
the nucleus of the franciscan order, and a place familiar to pilgrims
from far and near for many succeeding centuries, came into the keeping
of St. Francis in the year 1211, about nine months after Innocent III
had sanctioned his work among the people of Italy.
St. Francis and the
brethren had been but a year in their new abode when a figure passed in among
them for a moment and then was gone, leaving, as a vision to haunt them to
their dying day, the memory of her beauty and soul's purity.
Never in
the history of any saint has there been so touching and wondrous a scene as
when the young Clare left her father's palace in Assisi to take the vows of
perpetual and voluntary poverty at the altar of the Portiuncula. Followed by
two trembling women, she passed swiftly through the town in the dead of
night, across the fields by the slumbering village of Valecchio, and through
dark woods made more sombre by the starry Umbrian sky which at intervals
gleamed between the wide-spreading branches of the oak trees. The hurrying
figure of the young girl, swathed in a long mantle, seemed like some
spirit driven by winds towards an unknown future. One thing alone was
clear to her, she was nearing the abode of Francis Bernardone
whose preaching at San Giorgio only a month before had so thrilled
her, inspiring her in this strange way to seek the life he had described
in such fiery words. And just as she came in sight of the Portiuncula
the chanting of the brethren, which had reached her in the wood,
suddenly ceased, and they came out with lighted torches in expectation of her
coming. Swiftly and without a word she passed in to attend the midnight mass
which Francis was to serve. |
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