According to the legend Francis promised Melek-El-Kamil that he would at last be a Christian, for when he himself had died he would send two friars to baptize him into the faith of Christ. “Free thyself from every hindrance,” he said, “so that when the grace of God arrives thou mayest be well disposed to faith and devotion.” The years passed and the great sultan lay dying. Francis himself had been dead for many years but Melek-El-Kamil had not forgotten his words. He commanded that guards should be set in the passes, and if they saw two brothers in the Franciscan habit they should bring them to him at once. At the same time Francis appeared to two of the Brothers Minor in a vision and told them to go to the sultan. They set out at once, were brought to him by his guards, and found him still living. “Now I know of a truth that God hath sent his servants to save my soul,” he said. And so the sultan Melek-El-Kamil was baptized and died a servant of Christ.
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IT WAS TYPICAL OF FRANCIS that he never thought he had done enough. After his experience in the Saracen camp, the beatings and the chains and the long strain of his fight for the soul of Melek-El-Kamil, no one would have thought the worse of him if he had taken a little rest and allowed himself the pleasure of giving way to feelings of discouragement and depression. But the luxury of moods, and leisure in which to indulge them, had with Francis gone the way of other luxuries. Christ had told his disciples to say, “We are unprofitable servants. We have done our duty.” Obedience to the astringency of that command had cleared a lot of rubbish out of his spiritual system. His mission to the infidels had failed, but when one door shuts another opens, and when he got back to the Christian camp he set himself instantly, with redoubled vigor, to the task of preaching Christ to the Christians.
The result was many new recruits to the ranks of the order. A French bishop who was with the crusading army wrote at this time, with a certain annoyance, “Rainer, the prior of Saint Michael, has gone into the order of the Friars Minor. Colin, my English clerk, has gone into the same order, and so has Master Michael and Don Matthews to whom I had given the rectory of Holy Cross, and I am having a task to keep Cantor and Henry back.” That shows no picture of discouragement. Francis was at his habitual work of setting others alight from the torch of his own soul.
The expected reinforcements arrived and in November the crusaders once more attacked the Saracen army. This time they broke through and Damietta was captured after a heroic defense of over a year. Within her walls they found horror and tragedy, for starvation and plague together had done their deadly work. An enemy at their mercy, the ending of the long strain, had their usual demoralizing effect upon the victors and the Christians forgot the pity of Christ. All the baser elements in the army were held in check sufficiently for a triumphal entry into Damietta upon the Feast of the Purification, and then discipline broke down and the army of the cross disintegrated. In spite of the fall of Damietta it was obvious that this crusade was doomed to failure, and small companies of dispirited men began one by one to leave the demoralized army. What Francis felt when he saw the stricken city, and when he saw how so-called Christian men can behave when all that is evil in them is let loose, can be measured by the fact that after the fall of the city he too went away. He was accustomed to the sight of suffering, he was accustomed to the company of bad men, but not to a hell like this. He did what he could but the evil was so great that it tossed him aside like a straw and he went away overwhelmed by grief. Moods of self-pity and depression he had renounced, and the renouncement had set him free for something far deeper, a sharing of the redemptive agony of his Lord when he wept over the fall of Jerusalem. To that point now had his life come in its conformity to the pattern of the life of Christ.
He sailed for Acre and with him went a number of priests who had joined the order. Arrived there he was again greeted by Brother Elias and introduced to a young novice, Caesar of Speyer, who had been preaching the crusades in Germany and had become so unpopular with the relatives of the men whom he had inspired to join the crusading army that he had had to escape to Syria. He was a man after Francis’s own heart, a fine theologian but possessing also the humility and simplicity that Francis loved to see in his sons. Welcoming the young Caesar into the order must have been a joy to Francis just now when he was so brokenhearted. He did not rest long at Acre but almost instantly set out to visit the neighboring Christian communities and preach to them.
And then he disappeared. It is said that while he was in the camp of Melek-El-Kamil the sultan’s brother Conradin, the sultan of Damascus, had given him what was probably the most precious gift he ever received in his life, a free pass to visit the shrines of the Holy Land. Without this he could not have done so, for although the Moslems allowed Christian pilgrims to visit the Holy Places they made them pay for the privilege, and Francis, a poor man, could not have paid. He had so worked and suffered and prayed to win the infidels for Christ that it seems only fitting that this gift should have been made to him by one of them. And so, carrying them in his heart, he set out to visit the places where his Lord had lived and died. Francis, even less than most saints, had been allowed no privacy. The most intimate details of his dying and his death are common property, and as he liked to squander himself this would not have worried him overmuch. Yet there is one part of his life of which we know nothing. He went to the Holy Land, he was there for several months and he came back again, but he does not seem to have spoken of his time there even to Leo, for “we that were with him” made no record of it. It is as though Christ hid him beneath his mantle during those months, and they remain a secret between Francis and his God.
Yet we can imagine, if we will, the course which his journey may have taken. His first visit to Acre had been no more than a pause in the voyage to Damietta and there had been no time for an inland journey. But now he could go where he would and probably his first journey was to Nazareth, and because he was a pilgrim perhaps he allowed himself the pilgrim’s scrip and staff and bottle of water, and wore the scallop shell of Saint James of Compostella fastened to his habit. Like Sir Walter Raleigh’s pilgrim he would have needed nothing else.
Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My staff of hope to lean upon,
My scrip of faith, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.
In Nazareth, mountain-built, the great plain of Zezreel below, the snow-covered mountain ridge of Mount Hermon to the north, looking upon olive and vine terraces, Francis would have felt at home, for this home of Christ’s boyhood was not unlike the home of his own boyhood, Assisi. He must have walked about it shaken with joy, knowing that the beauty he looked upon was the same loveliness that Christ had seen and loved. He saw the same unchanging country sights, the carpenter at work in his arched shop opening on the village street, the women drawing water at the well, the yoked oxen plowing, the shepherd leading his sheep, talking to them in their special language, a lamb on his shoulder.
When he left Nazareth it would have been to travel through Galilee in the springtime, his bare feet walking the very paths that his Master had followed, through the fields bright with red anemones, the lilies of the field, and the white narcissus that is the rose of Sharon. He would have stood by the lake of Galilee and watched the fishermen mending their nets, their small boats rocking at anchor, and heard the slap of the water against the hulls and known that Christ had heard it too. He would have gone up into the hills at night and prayed there, the hood that he had drawn forward over his face wet with the dew. He would have traveled up to Jerusalem slowly, footsore and tired and hungry at times because through all these months his only means of subsistence would have been the table of the Lord, but scarcely aware of hardship, only aware that every step he took was in the footsteps of Christ. He would have seen the barren savage mountains, so different from the wooded ranges of his Italy, but with such wonderful changing color on their bare slopes that i
t was as though flowers clothed them, as they clothed the fields. He would have climbed the arid, sun-scorched Mount of Fasting, and prayed in the cave there where it was said that Christ had prayed. He would have seen him everywhere, by the campfire at night, seated among the pilgrims, muleteers, rogues, and vagabonds who crowded the caravansaries, talking to them and telling them stories, sitting beside a well to rest, asking a woman for a drink of water, calling to the bright-eyed, brown-skinned children to come to him that he might bless them. Above all, wherever the blind beggars and the cripples stood by the wayside crying for help, and in the wild places where the lepers wandered, Francis would have seen him. And wherever he saw him he would have followed, as he had always done. He too would have sat among the vagabonds, and laughed and played with the children, and anything he had about him he would have given away, a scrap of bread from his scrip or a bunch of anemones that he had picked. His love, his prayers, his healing hands would have been at the service of whoever needed them.
It must have taken him a long time to reach Jerusalem but the turnings of the way brought him at last to where he could see her throned upon her hill, the holy city beloved of Christ. He would have fallen on his knees beside the way, oblivious of the busy traffic of the high road and of the dust that the camels kicked over him as the caravans went by. His habit was itself dust-color and he would have been scarcely noticed, so small and insignificant was he, so much a part of the landscape wherever he was. Had anyone caught a glimpse of the illumined face within the hood they might have turned around and looked again, but he always kept his face well hidden when he prayed. He stumbled to his feet and went on, perhaps a little shakily, for at some point on his journey he had contracted the malaria from which he suffered until the end of his life, and a disease of the eyes which caused him much pain and in the end blinded him. But any pain or weakness from which he suffered would have given him added joy, for it was something to offer Christ in the city where he himself had endured so much.
Francis mingled with the crowd and entered Jerusalem through one of the gates in the towering tawny walls. The hospice for pilgrims that his beloved Charlemagne had founded in the eighth century had been destroyed but he would have found another and gone out from it day by day to visit the Holy Places. He saw the house of Mary, mother of Mark, in which Jesus had celebrated the Last Supper, the same house in which he showed himself to his disciples after his resurrection, and the house of Pentecost, where tradition says the Blessed Virgin lived until her death. When the Christians who had been in hiding in the mountains came back to Jerusalem after its destruction they had found the house in ruins and had rebuilt it as a place of Christian worship. During the crusading period it had been a convent of Canons Regular, and just over a hundred years after Francis saw it, when the guardianship of the Holy Places was entrusted to his own order, it became for a while a Franciscan convent, its church containing the Chapel of the Last Supper, its garden looking out over Jerusalem. Francis so often knew the future. Perhaps in vision he saw his sons kneeling in prayer in this place, tending the lamps and serving the altars in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and at Bethlehem, tending the flowers in the Garden of Gethsemane. What joy it would have given him. He could have asked of God no higher honor for his sons. He went to Bethany. He saw the moonlight falling through the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane and knelt and prayed beside the rock of the agony. He walked step by slow step, many times, along the Way of Sorrows, though perhaps at no time did he manage to see it very clearly, not because of his coming blindness but because he was still not ashamed to go weeping through the world for the passion of Christ.
The Way of Sorrows ended in a door in a wall and inside was the courtyard of the great church that held the Chapel of Calvary and the Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher. The church that the Emperor Constantine had built had been destroyed. The church that Francis saw had been built by the crusaders, and part of it still stands today. To keep vigil there must have been for him an experience so deep that it is scarcely surprising that he seems never to have spoken of it. In the center of the crusaders’ church, with its roof of cedar wood, was the Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher. Some distance away, and fourteen feet higher than the rest of the church, was the Chapel of Calvary, built over the hill of Golgotha. Francis, when he had slowly mounted the eighteen steps that led to it, would have found a marble chapel with a central column supporting a pictured vault, altars, and lamps burning. There was also a rock, and men said that the hole in it was the socket hole of the cross. Here he would have prayed, oblivious to all around him, aware only that he was on Calvary, kneeling at the foot of the cross.
When he came down the steps again to the main body of the church, to go to the Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher, he would have entered first the dim Chapel of the Angel and looked with awe upon the stone there, for they said the angel of the resurrection had sat upon it. The opening into the rock tomb was very small, so that a man must stoop to creep inside, and the windowless chamber could hold no more than three or four men kneeling together before the altar which covered the place where the body of Jesus had lain. Here too Francis prayed. It was the custom during crusading days for young men to be knighted in the rock tomb. After their vigil they would receive the accolade kneeling before the altar. Francis as a young man had longed for knighthood. Now, kneeling where the young knights knelt, he too kept his vigil as a knight of Christ.
It is thought that Francis was at Bethlehem for Christmas. It is only five and a half miles from Jerusalem and he walked there in the track of those first three pilgrims from a far country, the Three Kings. He passed the well of the star, where it is said that they stopped to drink, for they had lost the star and they were weary, but stooping over the water they saw it shining again within the well. Perhaps he stopped there too, to refill his water bottle before he went on to white-walled Bethlehem among its cypress trees. It was another little hill town such as he loved, and as in Nazareth he must have felt he had come home. He walked up the narrow streets and saw the old houses of Bethlehem built over the caves in the limestone rock where the animals are stabled. He asked for the birthplace of Christ and they showed him a low door in a strong wall. It was such a small door that only a child could go through it without bending his head, and had been made so to prevent the infidel from riding in on horseback and slaying the Christian worshipers inside. But Francis would have seen it as a symbol of Christ’s humility, who bent his head so low that he might pass under the low lintel of our human flesh, and of the humility asked of his followers, who cannot enter the kingdom of heaven unless they in their turn become as little children. Francis bent his head and went through the low door into the austere and splendid church that Constantine had built when he became a Christian. He went down the flight of steps from the choir to the cave beneath the church and kneeled down in the small place at the heart of the world where Christ was born.
There was another place where he would have prayed that Christmastide, before he went back to Jerusalem, and that was a certain spot in a fair valley where it was said the shepherds had been watching their sheep when they heard the angels singing. Shepherds still kept their sheep there, for it was an immemorial sheepfold.
The time came when Francis had to start the return journey to Acre. The last day arrived and he said goodbye to Jerusalem on earth. There was another one, and she filled his thoughts as he set out on the last stage of his pilgrimage, for within her walls dwelt all that he loved. “When shall I come to appear before the city of my God?”
As he traveled in the Holy Land Francis would often have seen the deserted castles of the crusaders on the hills and his heart would have been sore for that lost Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. Yet he would have found the chivalrous Saladin a man after his own heart, for he gave away all his wealth to those in need and died so poor that the money for his funeral had to be borrowed. As his humble funeral procession passed through the streets of Damascus men broke down and wept, and said that a saint had
left the earth, even as they would say to each other as the funeral procession of Francis passed through the streets of Assisi. It is strange to think how alike in spirit these two men were and how few years separated them in this land that was holy to them both.
But there was one crusaders’ castle which was still in full glory and probably Francis saw it, for it was on the main caravan road along the sea coast, the road that the Roman legions had tramped, which the crusaders had followed, and that was the Pilgrim’s Way to Jerusalem. This was Athlit, the last castle to be held by the crusaders in the Holy Land. Its great walls towered up among the rocks on the Mediterranean shore, where the waves creamed in over the golden sand. It was held by the Knights Templar, and the crest of the order flew from its battlements. It may have been one of the last vivid memories that Francis carried with him as he came again toward Acre. And so the great experience, the greatest of his life excepting only one other, drew to its close, and by it he had been strengthened for his own Gethsemane and Calvary, that were waiting for him at home in Italy.
My God and My All: The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi Page 23