Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/729

FRANCIS 093 the tenderness of his mother, and summoned to restore the goods he had taken away and renounce all his patri monial rights, the popular feeling, which had previously sided with his father against him, now turned in the youth s favour. The bishop, before whom the case finally came, discovered the youth s vocation to a religious life, and in duced him to restore the value of the goods to his father. The money had been all the while lying neglected amidst the ruins of the church. This accomplished, Francis re nounced all dependence upon his father, and gave himself up to the profession of a religious mendicant. " I have but one, a Father in heaven, now," he said. The people were melted to tears by his devotion, and the good bishop took him for a time under his own charge. Gradually Francis found his full vocation, not only in a life of entire devotion and poverty for himself, but in found ing an order of mendicants devoted to the service of the church. Tt was in the old scene of his earlier inspiration that the new idea came to him. Once more the divine voice was heard sounding in his ears : " Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for yonr journey, neither two coats, nor yet stave?." This was about the year 1208 or 1209, when, therefore, the saint was about twenty-six years of age. He was henceforth a preacher as well as an exemplar of poverty. He essayed to reproduce the picture of the divine life on earth, having not where to lay his held, going about doing good, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. "Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor; then thou shalt have treasure in heaven." Gradually there gathered round his cell, which he had fixed outside the town near a little church, the St Maria degli Angeli, better known as the Portiuncula, a band of disciples as enthusiastic as himself. " Fear not," he said to them, " because you are small and seem foolish. Have confidence in the Lord who has vanquished the world. Some will receive you. Many proud will resist you. Bear all with sweetness and patience. Soon the wise and the noble will be with us. The Lord hath given me to see this. I have in my ears the sounds of the languages of all the people who will come to us, French, Spaniards, Germans, English. The Lord will make us a great people, even to the end of the earth." la this insignificant manner was laid the foundation of the great Franciscan order. At first there were only seven, himself the eighth, but all were animated by the same spirit, and all followed the same rule of life. As he sent them forth he said, " Go and preach two and two. Preach peace and patience ; tend the wounded : relieve the distressed ; reclaim the erring ; bless them which persecute you, and pray for them that despitefully use you." The gospel of divine poverty was proclaimed everywhere. The spirit of self-renunciation spread by-and-by like wildfire, and multi tudes were added to the order day by day. It may seem to our modern imagination a fantastic dream, but the gospel of St Francis met a congenial root in the social and spiritual life of the 13th century, and rapidly grew into great results. The sanction and blessing of the papacy, however, were necessary to give the order ecclesiastical posi tion and influence. Francis himself undertook a new journey to Rome, and suddenly appeared before the great Innocent III. as he was walking one day on the terrace of the Lateran. The startled pope dismissed the mean stranger with mingled pity and contempt ; but the same night a vision came to him of the marvellous growth of a palm tree from meanness to magnificence ; and, as he pondered the meaning of the vision, a divine whisper reached him that thus powerful on behalf of the church was to prove the poor man whose appearance had startled him. The natural con clusion followed. The poor man was recalled, his projects were submitted to the judgment of the Vatican, and the result was that the papal sanction was formally extended to the order, a few years before the same sanction was given to the great rival order headed by the learned and noble Dominic. The founders of the two great mendicant orders are said to have met afterwards at Rome, and again at a great meeting of the Franciscans in 1219. St Dominic is credited with the most friendly greetings offered to his brother saint. " Thou art my companion ; thy work and mine is the same." It is said also that he looked with amazement at the second meeting on the remarkable fas cination which the simple-minded Francis exerted over his followers. But it is difficult to know whether these reputed rapprochements of the great leaders were not an afterthought of their biographers, interested in promoting the idea of the friendliness of the two powers which were destined for a time to divide the influence of the church between them. Francis founded an order of poor sisters as well as poor brothers, known by the name of Poor Claras or Clarisscs. The origin of the sisterhood is encircled in a halo of romance, such as everywhere surrounds the footsteps of St Francis. Clara was a young lady of the neighbourhood, who, either attracted by the saint s preaching, or enamoured of his life of poverty, or both, resolved to devote herself to self-sacrifice as he and his companions had done. He is said to have " poured into her ears the sweetness of Christ." The result was that she forsook her home, fled to the Portiuncula, and, being first a member of the order, was then placed in a female convent. From this questionable beginning sprang the sisterhood nearly as famous in its history as the great brotherhood, and which survives till this day. There was a third order also sprung up in the course of the saint s lifetime. So marvellous were the consequences of his preaching that whole populations, it is said, wished to devote themselves to consecrated poverty. But many, of course, had no real vocation to such a service, and Francis, visionary as he was, saw that the excesses of his system might prove its ruin. So he arranged to receive persons of this class into an order of what was called Tertiariesor Brethren of Penitence, who retained their social position and their customary employments in the world, while coming under general vows to abstain from worldly dissipations, such as the theatre, and otherwise to be scrupulous in all their con duct. Women were not admitted to this order without the consent of their husbands. Its members did not wear silk or other costly materials, but they had no special costume, and otherwise were at liberty. His conduct in this matter is sufficient to prove that, amidst all the apparently child like enthusiasm of the saint, he possessed, as indeed cannot be doubted, no inconsiderable vein of shrewd discernment and of practical ability. This order was established in 1221. Meanwhile Francis was unceasing in his personal labours. It is not easy to trace the chronology of his age or his adven tures; but the same spirit of self-sacrifice, of burning ardour and spiritual industry, is everywhere conspicuous. He made long missionary journeys to Illyria, to Spain, and even to the East, to preach to the Mahometans. He gained access to the sultan, it is said, and proclaimed to him the gospel of poverty. He was for some time in the Holy Land, and everywhere he gained multitudes of disciples. The atmo sphere of miracle everywhere accompanied him, and his famo was spread throughout Christendom. Whatever we may think of many events of his life, and impossible as it is now to disentangle the legendary thread of the supernatural from its more credible texture, there are many traits of the saint s character which are in no sense doubtful, but show with a clear and life-like impress what sort of a man he was. He was passionately fond of all living things, and found his chief happiness in ministering to the needs of his fellow- creatures or the enjoyment of the lower creatures around him. His love for animals of all kinds was one of his most