His prayer ended, Francis got up and went out of the church full of joy because he had been told what he had to do. Later he would know that God’s command had a deeper content than he had at first understood, but his youth and humility could not realize that now. He obeyed the command of the moment with the simple literalness that was always his. All his life his humble acts of obedience, following one upon another like the links in a chain, led him on at last to the whole content of God’s will for him. Outside in the sunlight he found the old priest who looked after the church sitting under the olive trees and he gave him a large sum of money to buy oil, so that there should always be a lamp burning before the crucifix. Then he mounted his horse and rode away.
At first the rebuilding of San Damiano did not seem to him a difficult task, for as a rich man’s son he was still thinking in terms of money. Gold would buy the stones and mortar he needed. Gold did everything. All you had to do, when any sort of service was asked of you, was to put your hand in your pocket. At the moment his pocket was momentarily empty but to fill it was an easy matter; especially as his father was away. He took some rolls of valuable cloth from the warehouse, loaded them on his horse, signed himself, the horse, and the cloth with the sign of the cross, for they were all alike now given to God, and rode away southward to Foligno. He rode through the streets into the market place and in front of the church of Santa Maria Infra Portas he sold both the cloth and the horse, and then walked back the ten miles through the forest to Assisi. It was possibly during this long walk that he came to an important decision. This selling of the horse was his first bit of self-stripping in the material sense. He had given away money, but it was his father’s, and he had given away his clothes, but new ones could quickly be fashioned from the cloth in his father’s warehouse. His horse was his own and loving animals as he did he must have found it hard to part with that horse. Perhaps this sacrifice helped him to make up his mind to take the next step, and leave his home. How could he remain in such comfort when the Christ who had spoken to him from the cross had had nowhere to lay his head, and when beggars slept huddled in doorways and in filthy dens that were not fit to house a dog? He would ask the priest at San Damiano if he might share his little tumble-down house with him.
The old priest, when Francis had kissed his hand and told him the whole story, was willing for Francis to live with him but refused to have anything to do with the money gained at Foligno; he feared the wrath of Pietro Bernadone when he should come home and find out what his son had been doing in his absence. Francis threw the money onto a window ledge in the little church and forgot about it, for if the priest would not let him use it for the rebuilding of San Damiano it had no further value for him.
He settled down with the kind old priest, sharing his poor dwelling and his scanty food. We can picture him serving the priest’s mass and praying in the church before the crucifix, weeping for the sin of the world and its cost to the poor man crucified, vowing himself like a knight keeping his vigil to the service of Christ and the Lady Poverty. But he was still a rather unsteady knight, for he shared the old priest’s nervousness as to what Pietro Bernadone might presently say and do, and noted that close to the priest’s little dwelling there was an underground cave where he would be able to hide himself if the worst happened.
It happened immediately upon Pietro’s return from his travels. The disappearance of the bales of cloth, of the horse, of the money that had been received for their sale, and of Francis himself, was for his father the last straw that broke him down. He had been patient with his extraordinary son and generous to Francis both in his extravagance and his lavish almsgiving. It is a measure of his love for his son that Francis seems to have had no qualms of conscience about selling the valuable cloth and appropriating the proceeds for his own purposes. His father had always so loved and indulged him that he took it for granted that what was his father’s was his too. And no doubt Pietro’s patience would have lasted out longer had not Francis in his latest escapade dealt him two hard blows in his two vital spots, his business instinct and his pride. The loss of the cloth, sold by his son for far less than its great worth in the open market place of Foligno, the most important commercial town of the region, was not to be borne, nor was the shame of his present way of life. That Francis should be generous to the poor from the height of his social superiority was one thing, and brought honor to the name of Bernadone, but that he should leave his home and actually share their way of life was quite another. The boy had made himself an object of ridicule to the city and in so doing had humiliated his father as well as himself. Pietro had been so proud of his eldest son, had built such high hopes upon him. They crashed now and in heartbroken misery and rage he summoned some of his friends to help him and set out for San Damiano to bring Francis back to his home and his senses. But some member of the household, and no doubt it was Pica, had warned Francis, and when his father arrived he was nowhere to be found. Pietro had to go home again frustrated, to nurse his anger and sorrow in increasing bitterness.
Francis stayed in the cave for a month, afraid to come out and face his father. This shrinking is hard to reconcile with the courage that distinguished him all his life. Perhaps it was largely made up of compunction. He was realizing now how much suffering he was causing his father and mother. “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father . . . and a man’s foes shall be they of his own household,” is one of the harder sayings of Christ. It cuts both ways. The making of a saint, the burning out of the dross in the fire, can be a grueling process not only for the saint but also for his unfortunate family. Francis, vowed to the service of Christ and his poverty, was ironly determined not to forsake them, but he was afraid to confront the pain and grief of Pica and Pietro. And how could he explain about this love for Christ that now possessed him so utterly? It was a thing so new and precious. To try to talk about it to the uncomprehending and the contemptuous would seem a sort of desecration. Perhaps he was also afraid that his father might curse him, and there is nothing an Italian fears more than the parental curse.
His month in the cave was a time of great suffering for him. He was kept alive by food secretly brought by a friend, but only God could comfort him as he struggled along the hard way of prayer and penitence alone in his dark hiding place. But comfort came, moments of light that illumined his mind and spirit like sunshine, and shame came, and courage. God’s gift of courage is also the command to use it, and when it was given to him he knew that he must come out and face his father. This was the next step, and unless he made that simple act of obedience he was no servant of his Master.
2
SO HE CAME OUT OF HIS CAVE into the sunshine and dragged himself up the steep stony way to the city, weak and haggard after the long period of suffering and struggle, dirty and ragged and unkempt. When he came into the streets of the city the people looked at him at first with pity, for they did not recognize him. Then the word went round, “It is Francesco Bernadone!” and their pity turned to contempt. They began to laugh and jeer at him and to pelt him with mud and stones, and then, as he bore it patiently and kept struggling along his way, up the Piazza Nuova toward his father’s house near the market place, they decided that he was mad and the cry went up, “Pazzo! Pazzo!” Italian children love a madman. They came tumbling up out of the dark alleys and presently a yelling crowd of them surrounded Francis, and the mud and stones came faster. Pietro heard the yells of “Pazzo!” in his house and came out into the street to see the fun. The disheveled lunatic, bruised and mud-bespattered and half fainting with exhaustion, was his own son.
Pietro’s always choleric temper became an uncontrollable madness. Shouting furiously at his son and the crowd alike he seized Francis and carried him indoors. But he felt no pity for his son; he did not give himself time for pity. He gave Francis a cruel flogging and flung him into a small underground cave-dungeon, still to be seen today, and here for a few days Francis stayed alone, the sounds of the house coming to him as
from a great distance, in his home but shut away in pain and semidarkness from all the laughter and love that once had centered around him. His fears in the cave at San Damiano could scarcely have conjured up anything harder to bear than this, but he bore it, and with gladness, for Christ had been jeered at on the way of sorrows and Christ had been flogged. The treatment which Pietro had hoped would break him strengthened him, for it gave him fellowship with the sufferings of Christ. When Pietro came to tell him he was leaving home on another journey he found his son still steadfast. In a last pitiful effort to break him by harshness he put manacles on Francis’s hands and then went away sick at heart.
Then Pica came to Francis, took off his manacles, looked after him and comforted him. There is no record of what they said to each other on what seems to have been the last occasion when they were ever alone together. Perhaps they never spoke of it, and it remained for both a hidden treasure which they only looked upon in memory and prayer. Pica’s efforts to persuade Francis to yield to his father had no success, and possibly she did not try very hard, for she had always known that this best-loved of her children belonged in a special sense to God. And so she gave him to God, and brought him to the door of the house and said goodbye, and watched him walk away from the home to which he would never return. When Pietro came back he heaped reproaches on her, and this picture of her enduring Pietro’s wrath for Francis’s sake is the last we have of her. It would be good to think that she lived long enough to see her son loved and revered by the whole of Italy, but it seems more likely that she died while still in middle age, for in after years Francis was to say that he knew only two women by sight, and these two would seem to be Saint Clare and the Lady Giacoma di Settesoli. There is no mention of his mother. He always paid great honor to those women who had given their sons to the order he founded, calling them the Mothers of the Order, but again there is no mention of the Lady Pica. Though we know so little about her, she remains one of the great figures of the Franciscan story. Through all that she taught her son, through all that she was in herself, she predisposed him to hear and obey the call of God when it came to him.
3
BUT PIETRO AND FRANCIS had not finished with each other, and the last act in the struggle between father and son was as dramatic as anything in the vivid drama of the life of Francis. Each was as determined as the other. Pietro was not going to leave one thing undone in his effort to bring his son to his senses, and nothing that he could do would shake Francis now in his allegiance to Christ.
Francis, when he left his home, went straight back to San Damiano, and Pietro upon his return pursued him there. But this time Francis did not hide in the cave but came bravely out to meet him. His father stormed at him and struck him with his fist, but he bore the anger and blows humbly and patiently. And Pietro realized that violence was a useless weapon. He tried to quieten his anger, to speak gently and bargain with Francis. He should go his own way, he said, if he would renounce his inheritance and give back the money he had taken at Foligno. Perhaps Pietro hoped in his heart that the family, and his place in it as his father’s eldest son, still meant something to Francis and that in the last resort he would not give them up, but Francis willingly agreed to renounce his inheritance. What he would not do was to give back the money. He had given it to the church and he considered that it was no longer his to give.
Pietro rode back to Assisi in angry misery but not yet hopeless. He went straight to the palace of the commune in the market square and laid his trouble before the consuls. He had their sympathy and they sent a herald out to San Damiano to summon Francis to appear before the communal court. Perhaps Pietro hoped his sensitive gentle son would never face a family wrangle before the consuls. And Francis, confronted with the herald, did refuse to appear, but not for reasons of shame. He said that as a man dedicated to religion he was not subject to the civic authorities but only to the bishop. Pietro went to the bishop, and Francis was summoned to appear before the episcopal court. This time he consented, saying, “I will come before the Lord Bishop gladly for he is the father and lord of souls.”
The day fixed for the trial came. It was a chilly morning in early spring but not too cold to deter the citizens of Assisi from flocking to the bishop’s palace to see what would happen between the father and son. The quarrel in the Bernadone family must have been the great topic of conversation in the city at this time, some taking one side and some the other, Pietro’s contemporaries full of sympathy for him and solidly behind parental authority, the young men who had been Francis’s friends quite sure he had taken leave of his senses but backing him against his father all the same. The older men and the young ones in their bright clothes and rich furred coats streamed into the hall of the palace and filled it to capacity, but when they had taken their places perhaps the poor men to whom Francis had been so generous crept about the door and stood there shivering in their rags in the cold wind, to see what would happen to the white-faced boy whom they had last seen being stoned in the street.
Bishop Guido came in in his robes and gravely took his place and Pietro and Francis came forward and faced each other, one on each side of his throne. It must have surprised many to see that Francis had put on a suit of his old bright clothes. Did he mean to give in? But there was no sign of yielding on his stern young face as he stood listening to his father stating his case and claim against him. Pietro ceased speaking and it was the turn of Francis, but he kept humbly silent. Then the bishop gave judgment and though he loved Francis it was for the father against the son. Francis must return the money. He had no right to wealth gained by selling goods that belonged to his father, no, not though he wanted the money not for himself but for the rebuilding of a church. The bishop summed up by saying with a certain scorn, “God does not wish his church to be succored with goods which perhaps are gotten by injustice.” But because of his love for Francis, and because he believed that God had indeed some great purpose for him, he went on to speak gently to him. “Have thou then faith in the Lord, my son, and play the man, and fear not, for himself will be thy helper, and will give thee in abundance whatsoever is needful for the work of his church.”
Francis had brought the money with him and he gave it back. He had been willing to submit to the judgment of the bishop, and perhaps he had now seen for himself that he should not have sold that cloth. It was not as a rich man that God wanted him to rebuild San Damiano but as a poor one. The way to do it would be shown him as soon as he had put all compromise behind him and given himself utterly to the poverty of Christ. The bishop’s words put fresh heart into him, for he believed they came from God himself. They gave him courage to do what he believed he had to do and had planned to do when he dressed himself in the old bright clothes. For a long time now he had been gradually stripping himself of one thing after the other, of his dreams, friends, comforts, and pleasure, his revulsions and fears, self-love and self-will, and now he did the last thing needful, the last thing that cut him off forever from his old life. In fervor of spirit he stripped off his colorful garments and tossed them on the floor at his father’s feet, saying, “My Lord Bishop, I will give back unto him with a light heart not only the money that belongeth unto him, but my clothes also.” Then standing up before all the people, clothed in nothing but his hair shirt, the garment of penitence, he cried out in his clear resonant voice, “Hear ye all, and understand: until now have I called Pietro Bernadone my father, now I give back all that I had of him, desiring to say only, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven,’ with whom I have laid up my whole treasure and on whom I have set my whole trust and hope.”
It was an arresting action, and if it seems typical of that love of striking a fine figure that had distinguished the younger Francis, that is not the truth about it, for that was the sort of nonsense he had now left behind him. Dramatic he had to be, for drama was part of him, as it is in greater or lesser degree of all the Italian people, who must make a picture of a thing before they thoroughly understand it, but this was a n
ew sort of drama, a piece of symbolism glorifying not himself but God. In later years his biographer Thomas of Celano was to say of him, “He made of his whole body a tongue to preach the gospel,” and he was beginning now. His half-naked figure proclaimed that we bring nothing into this world and we shall take nothing out of it excepting only the garment of penitence, that unless a man be born again in self-naughting and humility he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, that in heaven alone is our treasure and in God alone our trust and help. By this final stripping Francis had made of himself an integrated personality; body, mind, and soul, he was forged together by his burning love of Christ into a sword of integrity. It was said of his sermons in later years that they pierced his hearers, and this his first sermon was no less piercing than those that were to come, and the unconscious power with which he could sway a large concourse of people was as evident now as when he was at the height of his fame. The emotions of the crowd packing the hall swung away from his father and over to him in sympathy, and many of the people wept, not only in pity for him but as we weep when some chord of music touches us unbearably, making us aware of those high and far-off things for which in our hearts we confusedly long but for which we are too cowardly to pay the price. Bishop Guido, weeping with the rest, was swept up to participate in the drama. He got up and put his own cloak around Francis, who perhaps now was shivering and exhausted, chilled by the cold wind that swept in through the unglazed windows and drained by the tremendous effort he had made. To the onlookers it seemed an act as symbolic as Francis’s own. The homeless for Christ’s sake are never left without the protection of his church about them.
My God and My All: The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi Page 4