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

by Elizabeth Goudge

  This time at Rivo-Torto was for the brothers a time of unusual physical danger. They were always in danger from hungry wolves, and the bandits and desperate men who roamed about in the forest, but now the war between Guelph and Ghibelline claimants to the imperial throne brought added danger. The Emperor Otto IV, who had been crowned by Innocent only a year ago and had sworn fidelity to him, had broken his oath and once more the Germans were on the march in Umbria. Perugia was on the warpath and Assisi had shut herself within her gates. But the brothers did not take refuge in their city. They remained where they were in the forest and Francis did not allow the proximity of the barbarians to make them afraid. On the contrary, when he heard that the emperor himself was making an armed progress through the valley on his way to Rieti he sent one of the brothers to intercept him and tell him something that Francis already knew: that Otto IV would fall from power and die ingloriously. Six years later Francis’s prediction was fulfilled, for Otto died defeated and discredited. As he lay dying, priests surrounded his bed scourging him as he sobbed out the words of the Miserere, and he cried to them to lay on the lash more heavily as death came nearer. It is amazing that the courageous brother who came to tell him of his miserable end was not hanged offhand on the nearest tree, but he was not. The courage and defenselessness of these poor men seemed in their own country always to protect them.

  The war gave Francis a great chance in Assisi and he took it eagerly and gratefully. His greeting of “The Lord give thee peace” was no formal one. He cared passionately for peace, worked and prayed for it, primarily for the peace of God in the soul but also for peace between nations and cities, and between one man and another. The Italian communes at that time seem to have thoroughly enjoyed quarreling. Within Assisi there had been endless bitterness and hatred both between merchants and nobles, and between them and the poor whom they oppressed. But now their common danger, and fear of once more losing their independence, disposed them to listen to Francis when he implored them to make their peace with each other and their God. The 9th of November, 1210, was a great day both for Assisi and in the life of Francis. Upon that day the citizens signed a Treaty of Concord among themselves. The nobles and merchants on one side, and the poor men on the other, the majores and the minores, bound themselves to work together for the common good of Assisi, and to enter into no alliance with pope or emperor or any other city without the consent of the whole commune. Exiles were to return, taxes were to be fixed justly and civic peace was to reign.

  The Treaty of Concord was a great testimony to the extraordinary ascendancy which Francis, still so young, had won over his own people. The pope’s blessing and sanction of his little order had silenced their fears and won their respect and his city would never again laugh at him or persecute him. But that was not all. He himself, by the power of his preaching, had won them. If the months at Rivo-Torto were months of quiet waiting for the brothers, they were not entirely so for Francis, for they witnessed his emergence as a preacher. He had been listened to when he preached at the street corners, but now that as the head of a recognized order he could preach in the churches and in the cathedral, his opportunities were immensely increased. His first sermon was preached at San Giorgio, the church that was so bound up with the life of the order. Soon after that the canons of the cathedral asked him to preach every Sunday at the cathedral itself. To give him a little space of quiet they lent him a room in a house in their garden. He would come there on Saturday night and after a short rest would spend hours in prayer in preparation for the morning’s mass, and for his sermon.

  The people of Assisi had built their own cathedral, and it had been finished only a few years before Francis preached his first sermon there. Built of the stone of Mount Subasio, it was at this time white and sparkling, with a rosy tinge in the stone. There were no benches and no pulpit in the modern sense; the congregation listened standing or kneeling and the preacher stood on a platform. The people applauded the preacher, or audibly disagreed with him as the case might be, and he in his turn had room on his platform for much movement and gesticulation. A thirteenth-century sermon in an Italian cathedral must have been at times a lively affair, and Francis’s youth and eagerness, and the fact that he preached in the homely language of the people and not in Latin, must have made it even livelier than was usual. One can picture the eager crowd waiting for him each Sunday morning, packing the space before the pulpit. Already they must have been aware that Assisi was to possess that most treasured of all possessions, its own private and particular saint, and they whispered to each other about him as they waited; and then fell silent, for he had come and was making his way to the pulpit, a small spare figure in a patched and shabby habit, barefoot, his young face too thin and worn for his years, but with dark eyes blazing with unquenchable vitality. He mounted the pulpit and stood before them, capturing them even before he began to speak.

  So many tried to put on record what they felt about his preaching that it is not difficult to realize what a great experience it must have been to hear him. He did not write down his sermons, his preparation beforehand was that nightlong vigil of prayer and communion with God, and he used no rhetoric, he spoke straight from his heart as the Holy Spirit inspired him, in direct and simple language. He was naturally a fine actor but he never thought about his gift, or indeed about himself at all, he thought of nothing but Christ, the savior of the world, and the hunger for him and need of him of the people before him, and so he spoke easily and naturally, with all the force of his sincerity and burning love for God and men. Thomas of Celano said of his preaching, “He would hint in a few words at what was unspeakable and mingling ardent gestures and movements with his words transported his hearers wholly to heavenly things.” Sometimes the joy of these heavenly things would so overwhelm him that words would break down altogether and he would sing and dance God’s praises. His actual words, divorced from the irresistible charm of the man himself, would sometimes be difficult for his hearers to recapture afterwards. One of them said, “I never remember what words he uses, and if I do they do not seem to me to be the same.”

  But at other times what he said would be easy to remember because like his Master before him he often talked in parables. One grim little story that he told of the deathbed of a wily and wicked old usurer shows that he knew how to put the fear of God into his hearers. And he was not afraid of plain speaking. Bonaventure says, “Forasmuch as he did himself first practice that which he afterwards preached unto others, he feared none that might blame him, and did most faithfully preach the truth. It was not his way to smooth over the faults of any, but to smite them, not to flatter the life of sinners, but rather to aim at it with stern reproofs.” These reproofs had their effect. Men who had gained their wealth unworthily gave it back to the poor and merchants who found the business world incompatible with strict integrity forsook it and became farmers instead. In his great love of souls it mattered nothing to him whether his congregation was large or small. Celano says, “He saw the greatest concourse of people as one man; and to one man he preached most carefully, as to a multitude.”

  But if Francis had sometimes to be away from his sons he never for one moment forgot them. One Saturday night, when he was praying in the house in the canons’ garden, and the brothers at Rivo-Torto were some of them praying and some of them keeping vigil, light suddenly filled the dark little hovel where they were. They all saw the same thing, a fiery chariot moving to and fro with over it a ball of fire of amazing brightness. At the same time spiritual light flooded their souls and they were made known to each other. They looked into each other’s consciences and knew the real man as they would know him in heaven. Then the light, and the supernatural knowledge, both left them, and utterly awed they crept close to each other and asked what this mystery could mean. They all had the same explanation: Francis, though absent in the body, was with them in spirit and in prayer. When he came home the next day they found that they were right.

  4

 
THE LIFE AT RIVO-TORTO was abruptly terminated by the arrival of a donkey. Francis and the brothers were praying in their hovel when the head and shoulders of a donkey appeared in the narrow door, and the rough voice of an unmannerly peasant was heard admonishing the donkey outside, in words that he intended the brothers to hear. “Get in with you, get well within, for we shall do well in this place.” Goaded from behind brother ass came trampling in, the unmannerly peasant after him. There was not room in the hovel for the Brothers Minor, the peasant, and the donkey; somebody had to go and Francis decided it should be the brothers. Always so courteous himself, discourtesy was one of the few things which still had power to upset him and against which his sense of humor seems not to have been proof. He was troubled by the man’s rudeness. “Brothers, God hath not called us to provide stabling for an ass, nor an inn-parlor for men,” he said, and he and the brothers went away and left the donkey and the peasant in possession.

  Now they were shelterless again and had no place of prayer except the caves, high up in the ravine, which could not always be reached in bad weather. Though they were bound to the Lady Poverty and could have no home, as men normally understand the word, they had to have somewhere to pray and some center from which they could go out to preach the gospel, and to which they could return. Leaving the brothers in the woods Francis went to his good friend Bishop Guido to ask if he knew of any chapel which they might use for their prayer, but for once Bishop Guido was not able to help him. He went to the canons of the cathedral and they could not help him either. Then he climbed up the mountain to the Benedictine abbey, that looks out over the great plain like a lighthouse over the sea, and laid his difficulties before the abbot. This abbot must have been an understanding and generous man, for after discussing it with his monks he offered to give the Benedictine property of the beloved Portiuncula to the Brothers Minor for their own. He made only one stipulation, that if the order should grow larger the Portiuncula should always be looked upon as the center of the whole order. Francis’s joy was tempered by his terror of possessing anything, but that difficulty too was happily settled. The Brothers Minor were not to possess the Portiuncula but only pay rent for it; the yearly payment of a basket of fish caught in the river. The brothers always faithfully paid this rent, and the abbot never neglected to send a receipt in the shape of a vessel of oil.

  Francis, when he left the abbot, must have gone with all possible speed down the mountain to the woods below to find the brothers and tell them his glorious news. God had given them the Portiuncula. When they had returned from Rome they had not gone back to the holy place that they loved above all others, for they feared to lay claim to it. But now it had come to them as a gift of God. They were homeless men, as Christ had been homeless, but they were to have their luogo, their place. Christ had had Bethany and they were to have the Portiuncula.

  Part II

  Knights of God

  Chapter 7

  The First Order

  Where there is charity and wisdom there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility there is neither anger nor worry. Where there is poverty and joy there is neither cupidity nor avarice. Where there is quiet and meditation there is neither solicitude nor dissipation. Where there is the fear of the Lord to guard the house the enemy cannot find a way to enter.

  WRITINGS OF SAINT FRANCIS

  THE NEXT TEN YEARS were the great years of the order and the Portiuncula saw the glory of them. From it Francis and his sons went out on their missionary journeys and to it they returned. As the order grew in numbers and stretched out beyond the bounds of Italy, brothers from all over Europe would flock there for the chapters, would live there for a while and go away again refreshed. Pilgrims came there, rich men and poor men, and whoever they were and whatever their troubles, the Portiuncula comforted them. Soon after it had been given to the order a man who afterward became one of their number had a dream. He saw a multitude of men kneeling around Santa Maria degli Angeli and they were blind. With their clasped hands and their blind faces upturned to him they were imploring God to give them sight, and while they were praying a light broke out in the sky and fell upon their faces and they could see. The Portiuncula was always a place of light and like a lighthouse sent its beams flashing out into a dark and troubled world. It had a spirit all its own, even apart from Francis and the brothers. It had been a place of prayer for so long that like all such places it seemed to have its own atmosphere of prayer and peace.

  The plan of the Portiuncula was that of all subsequent Franciscan “places.” The brothers did not build in stone in the early days of the order, for stone would have given an air of permanence to their dwellings; they built themselves huts of wattle and daub, with thatched roofs. Enclosing the church and the little buildings was a quickset hedge. Within this hedge was the brothers’ private enclosure, where laymen did not come and where they themselves spoke only of the things of God. They had a garden where they grew vegetables and herbs, and they had the one and only Franciscan luxury, a few flowers “that they might cause those that should look upon them to remember the eternal sweetness.” Their beds were of straw and they had no chairs or tables but ate sitting on the floor, and they had only the poorest of platters and cooking utensils, for Francis wished “that all things should end in poverty, should sing out to them of their pilgrimage and exile.” Enclosing the whole of the little domain was the beautiful oak wood.

  After reading the old chronicles three phrases are left chiming in one’s mind like music. “The castled villages . . . Into the wood . . . We that were with him.” They call up three vivid pictures of the life of the order during these early years.

  The first shows us the gray-clad brothers traveling along some rough road at evening, and seeing up above them at the end of the way one of those enchanted villages perched on a rocky hilltop that one sees so often in the background of Italian pictures. The crenelated towers of the castle are black against the sunset sky and below are the crowded little houses, their walls pierced with small squares of light where lamps have been lit and set in tiny windows. The brothers, tired and footsore, quicken their pace. In the castled village they will find food and shelter for the night, and in the morning they will preach the gospel of Christ, comfort the sorrowful, and minister to the sick.

  The phrase “into the wood” comes again and again. It was their cathedral and they went there to pray. In the aisles of the wood each man could find his own solitude and be undisturbed in his prayer. There was no sound there except the rustling of the leaves and the singing of the birds. If God in his mercy should draw them into adoring awareness of himself they could stay there resting in his presence and no one would interrupt them and take them away.

  “We that were with him.” It is spoken with infinite pride and love by those brothers whose memories of Francis we have now in The Legend of Saint Francis by the Three Companions and The Mirror of Perfection, but it could have been said with the same pride and love by all the men who gathered around him in the first great days of life at the Portiuncula. Though their numbers were being added to all the time, they were still small enough as a community for Francis to know them all intimately, and to infuse every one of them with his own joy and selflessness, and complete devotion to Christ their master. Their love for each other had its being in their love for Christ, was born of Christ, and returned to him again. They were the knights of God, not of Francis. Not for one moment would Francis have allowed their pride in him and deep love for him to have put him on any sort of pedestal. They were all humble men, but he was the humblest of all and the servant of all, and so afraid was he of the authority that the pope had given him that some other brother was always appointed to be the “mother” of the community, to whose judgment he submitted himself with the rest. The dream he had had before the journey to Spoleto, of the palace of the Lady Poverty where he was to dwell with his followers, had come true now, but the armor of the knights was emblazoned not with any device that belonged
to Francis but with the cross of Christ. What was said of one brother could have been said of them all: “His heart was set on imitating Christ through the bodily and spiritual strength of the cross.”

  Saint Catherine of Siena said, “All the way to heaven is heaven because he said, ‘I am the Way,’ ” and because they had chosen to follow that way, upheld and carried by his cross of sacrifice, the breath of heaven was about them and they knew, even in their mortal days, even in defeat and pain and fear, the meaning of joy. It was a gift to them, the resurrection gift of Christ who said, “Your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you,” but in the thought of Francis to be joyful was also a command, as much so as the command to be poor and humble and to walk in love. It was their business to see that their joy was not taken from them. It was a flame to be tended and, if it went out, to be immediately lit again. He knew there was no better armor against sin than joy and would say to the brothers, “If the servant of God would study to preserve within and without the spiritual joy which comes of cleanness of heart, and is acquired by devoutness of prayer, the demons would not be able to harm him, for they would say: ‘Since this servant of God has joy in tribulation as in prosperity, we can find no way of entering to him nor of hurting him.’” He would allow no gloomy faces. To a grieving brother he said, “Why dost thou make an outward show of sorrow and sadness for thy offenses? Keep thou this sadness between thee and thy God, but before me and others, study always to have joy, for it befits not a servant of God to show before his brother or another sadness or a troubled face.”