by Will Durant
Many Minorites protested against the relaxation of Francis’ rule. As “Spirituals” or “Zealots” they lived in hermitages or small convents in the Apennines, while the great majority of Franciscans preferred spacious monasteries. The Spirituals argued that Christ and His apostles had possessed no property; St. Bonaventura agreed; Pope Nicholas III approved the proposition in 1279; Pope John XXII pronounced it false in 1323; and thereafter those Spirituals who persisted in preaching it were suppressed as heretics. A century after the death of Francis his most loyal followers were burned at the stake by the Inquisition.
IV. ST. DOMINIC
It is unjust to Dominic that his name should suggest the Inquisition. He was not its founder, nor was he responsible for its terrors; his own activity was to convert by example and preaching. He was of sterner stuff than Francis, but revered him as the saintlier saint; and Francis loved him in return. Essentially their work was the same: each organized a great order of men devoted not to self-salvation in solitude but to missionary work among Christians and infidels. Each took from the heretics their most persuasive weapons—the praise of poverty and the practice of preaching. Together they saved the Church.
Domingo de Guzman was born at Calaruega in Castile (1170). Brought up by an uncle priest, he was one of thousands who in those days took Christianity to heart. When famine struck Palencia he is said to have sold all his goods, even his precious books, to feed the poor. He became an Augustinian canon regular in the cathedral of Osma, and in 1201 accompanied his bishop on a mission to Toulouse, then a center of the Albigensian heresy. Their very host was an Albigensian; it may be a legend that Dominic converted him overnight. Inspired by the advice of the bishop and the example of some heretics, Dominic adopted the life of voluntary poverty, went about barefoot, and strove peaceably to bring the people back to the Church. At Montpellier he met three papal legates—Arnold, Raoul, and Peter of Castelnau. He was shocked by their rich dress and luxury, and attributed to this their confessed failure to make headway against the heretics. He rebuked them with the boldness of a Hebrew prophet: “It is not by the display of power and pomp, nor by cavalcades of retainers and richly houseled palfreys, nor by gorgeous apparel, that the heretics win proselytes; it is by zealous preaching, by apostolic humility, by austerity, by holiness.”66 The shamed legates, we are told, dismissed their equipage and shed their shoes.
For ten years (1205–16) Dominic remained in Languedoc, preaching zealously. The only mention of him in connection with physical persecution tells how, at a burning of heretics, he saved one from the flames.67 Some of his order proudly called him, after his death, Persecutor haereticorum—not necessarily the persecutor but the pursuer of heretics. He gathered about him a group of fellow preachers, and their effectiveness was such that Pope Honorius III (1216) recognized the Friars Preachers as a new order, and approved the rule drawn up for it by Dominic. Making his headquarters at Rome, Dominic gathered recruits, taught them, inspired them with his almost fanatical zeal, and sent them out through Europe as far east as Kiev, and into foreign lands, to convert Christendom and heathendom to Christianity. At the first general chapter of the Dominicans at Bologna in 1220, Dominic persuaded his followers to adopt by unanimous vote the rule of absolute poverty. There, a year later, he died.
Like the Franciscans, the Dominicans spread everywhere as wandering, mendicant friars. Matthew Paris describes them in the England of 1240:
Very sparing in food and raiment, possessing neither gold nor silver nor anything of their own, they went through cities, towns, and villages, preaching the Gospel… living together by tens or sevens … thinking not of the morrow, nor keeping anything for the next morning…. Whatsoever was left over from their table of the alms give them, this they gave forthwith to the poor. They went shod only with the Gospel, they slept in their clothes on mats, and laid stones for pillows under their heads.68
They took an active, and not always a gentle, part in the work of the Inquisition. They were employed by the popes in high posts and diplomatic missions. They entered the universities and produced the two giants of Scholastic philosophy, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas; it was they who saved the Church from Aristotle by transforming him into a Christian. Together with the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Austin Friars they revolutionized the monastic life by mingling with the common people in daily ministrations, and raised monasticism in the thirteenth century to a power and beauty which it had never attained before.
A large perspective of monastic history does not bear out the exaggerations of moralists nor the caricatures of satirists. Many cases of monastic misconduct can be cited; they draw attention precisely because they are exceptional; and which of us is so saintly that he may demand an untarnished record from any class of men? The monks who remained faithful to their vows—who lived in obscure poverty, chastity, and piety—eluded both gossip and history; virtue makes no news, and bores both readers and historians. We hear of “sumptuous edifices” possessed by Franciscan monks as early as 1249, and in 1271 Roger Bacon, whose hyperboles often forfeited him a hearing, informed the pope that “the new orders are now horribly fallen from their original dignity.”69 But this is hardly the picture that we get from Fra Salimbene’s candid and intimate Chronicle (1288?). Here a Franciscan monk takes us behind the scenes and into the daily career of his order. There are peccadilloes here and there, and some quarrels and jealousy; but over all that arduously inhibited life hovers an atmosphere of modesty, simplicity, brotherliness, and peace.70 If, occasionally, a woman enters this story, she merely brings a touch of grace and tenderness into narrow and lonely lives. Hear a sample of Fra Salimbene’s guileless chatter:
There was a certain youth in the convent of Bologna who was called Brother Guido. He was wont to snore so mightily in his sleep that no man could rest in the same house with him, wherefore he was set to sleep in a shed among the wood and straw; yet even so the brethren could not escape him, for the sound of that accursed rumbling echoed throughout the whole convent. So all the priests and discreet brethren gathered together … and it was decreed by a formal sentence that he should be sent back to his mother, who had deceived the order, since she knew all this of her son before he was received among us. Yet was he not sent back forthwith, which was the Lord’s doing…. For Brother Nicholas, considering within himself that the boy was to be cast out through a defect of nature, and without guilt of his own, called the lad daily about the hour of dawn to come and serve him at Mass; and at the end of the Mass the boy would kneel at his bidding behind the altar, hoping to receive some grace of him. Then would Brother Nicholas touch the boy’s face and nose with his hands, desiring, by God’s gifts, to bestow on him the boon of health. In brief, the boy was suddenly and wholly healed, without further discomfort to the brethren. Thenceforth he slept in peace and quiet, like any dormouse.71
V. THE NUNS
As early as the time of St. Paul it had been the custom, in Christian communities, for widows and other lonely or devout women to give some of all of their days and their property to charitable work. In the fourth century some women, emulating monks, left the world and lived the life of religious in solitude or in communities, under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. About 530 St. Benedict’s twin sister Scholastica established a nunnery near Monte Cassino under his guidance and rule. From that time Benedictine convents spread through Europe, and Benedictine nuns became almost as numerous as Benedictine monks. The Cistercian Order opened its first convent in 1125, its most famous one, Port Royal, in 1204; by 1300 there were 700 Cistercian nunneries in Europe.72 In these older orders most of the nuns came from the upper classes,73 and nunneries were too often the repository of women for whom their male relations had no room or taste. In 458 the Emperor Majorian had to forbid parents to rid themselves of supernumerary daughters by compelling them to enter a convent.74 Entry into Benedictine nunneries usually required a dowry, though the Church prohibited any but voluntary offerings.75 Hence a prioress, like Chauce
r’s, could be a woman of proud breeding and large responsibilities, administering a spacious domain as the source of her convent’s revenues. In those days a nun was usually called not Sister but Madame.
St. Francis revolutionized conventual as well as monastic institutions. When Santa Clara came to him in 1212, and expressed her wish to found for women such an order as he had founded for men, he overlooked canonical regulations and, though himself only a deacon, received her vows, accepted her into the Franciscan Order, and commissioned her to organize the Poor Clares. Innocent III, with his usual ability to forgive infractions of the letter by the spirit, confirmed the commission (1216). Santa Clara gathered about her some pious women who lived in communal poverty, wove and spun, nursed the sick, and distributed charity. Legends formed around her almost as fondly as around Francis himself. Once, we are told, a pope
went to her convent to hear her discourse of divine and celestial things…. Santa Clara had the table laid, and set loaves of bread thereon that the Holy Father might bless them…. Santa Clara knelt down with great reverence, and besought him to be pleased to bless the bread…. The Holy Father answered: “Sister Clare, most faithful one, I desire that thou shouldst bless this bread, and make over it the sign of the most holy cross of Christ, to which thou hast completely devoted thyself.” And Santa Clara said: “Most Holy Father, forgive me, but I should merit great reproof if, in the presence of the Vicar of Christ, I, who am a poor, vile woman, should presume to give such benediction.” And the Pope answered: “To the end that this be not imputed to thy presumption but to the merit of obedience, I command thee, by holy obedience, that thou … bless this bread in the name of God.” And then Santa Clara, even as a true daughter of obedience, devoutly blessed the bread with the sign of the most holy cross. Marvelous to tell! forthwith on all those loaves the sign of the cross appeared figured most beautifully. And the Holy Father, when he saw this miracle, partook of the bread and departed, thanking God and leaving his blessing with Santa Clara.76
She died in 1253, and was canonized soon afterward. Franciscan monks in divers localities organized similar groups of Clarissi, or Poor Clares. The other mendicant orders—Dominicans, Augustinians, Carmelites—also established a “second order” of nuns; and by 1300 Europe had as many nuns as monks. In Germany the nunneries tended to be havens of intense mysticism; in France and England they were often the refuge of noble ladies “converted” from the world, or deserted, disappointed, or bereaved. The Ancren Riwle—i.e., the Rule of the Anchorites—reveals the mood expected of English nuns in the thirteenth century. It may have been written by Bishop Poore probably for a convent at Tarrant in Dorsetshire. It is darkened with much talk of sin and hell, and some blasphemous abuse of the female body;77 but a tone of fine sincerity redeems it, and it is among the oldest and noblest specimens of English prose.78
It would be a simple matter to gather, from ten centuries, some fascinating instances of conventual immorality. A number of nuns had been cloistered against their wills,79 and found it uncomfortable to be saints. Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury and Bishop Egbert of York deemed it necessary to forbid the seduction of nuns by abbots, priests, and bishops.80 Bishop Ivo of Chartres (1035–1115) reported that the nuns of St. Fara’s Convent were practicing prostitution; Abélard (1079–1142) gave a similar picture of some French convents of his time; Pope Innocent III described the convent of St. Agatha as a brothel that infected the whole surrounding country with its evil life and repute.81 Bishop Rigaud of Rouen (1249) gave a generally favorable report of the religious groups in his diocese, but told of one nunnery in which, out of thirty-three nuns and three lay sisters, eight were guilty, or suspected, of fornication, and “the prioress is drunk almost any night.”82 Boniface VIII (1300) tried to improve conventual discipline by decreeing strict claustration, or seclusion from the world; but the decree could not be enforced.83 At one nunnery in the diocese of Lincoln, when the bishop came to deposit this papal bull, the nuns threw it at his head, and vowed they would never obey it;84 such isolation had probably not been in their vows. The prioress in Chaucer’s Tales had no business there, for the Church had forbidden nuns to go on pilgrimage.85
If history had been as careful to note instances of obedience to conventual rules as to record infractions, we should probably be able to counter each sinful lapse with a thousand examples of fidelity. In many cases the rules were inhumanly severe, and merited violation. Carthusian and Cistercian nuns were required to keep silence except when speech was indispensable—a command sorely uncongenial to the gentle sex. Usually the nuns attended to their own needs of cleaning, cooking, washing, sewing; they made clothing for monks and the poor, linen for the altar, vestments for the priest; they wove and embroidered hangings and tapestries, and depicted on them, with nimble fingers and patient souls, half the history of the world. They copied and illuminated manuscripts; they received children to board, and taught them letters, hygiene, and domestic arts; for centuries they provided the only higher education open to girls. Many of them served as nurses in hospitals. They rose at midnight for prayers, and again before dawn, and recited the canonical hours. Many days were fast days, on which they ate no food till the evening meal.
Let us hope that these hard rules were sometimes infringed. If we look back upon the nineteen centuries of Christianity, with all their heroes, kings, and saints, we shall find it difficult to list many men who came so close to Christian perfection as the nuns. Their lives of quiet devotion and cheerful ministration have made many generations blessed. When all the sins of history are weighed in the balance, the virtues of these women will tip the scale against them, and redeem our race.
VI. THE MYSTICS
Many such women could be saints because they felt divinity closer to them than hands and feet. The medieval imagination was so stimulated by all the forces of word, picture, statue, ceremony, even by the color and quantity of light, that supersensory visions came readily, and the believing soul felt itself breaking through the bounds of nature to the supernatural. The human mind itself, in all the mystery of its power, seemed a supernatural and unearthly thing, surely akin to—a blurred image and infinitesimal fraction of—the Mind behind and in the matter of the world; so the top of the mind might touch the foot of the throne of God. In the ambitious humility of the mystic the hope burned that a soul unburdened of sin and uplifted with prayer might rise on the wings of grace to the Beatific Vision and a divine companionship. That vision could never be attained through sensation, reason, science, or philosophy, which were bound to time, the many, and the earth, and could never reach to the core and power and oneness of the universe. The problem of the mystic was to cleanse the soul as an internal organ of spiritual perception, to wash away from it all stain of selfish individuality and illusory multiplicity, to widen its reach and love to the uttermost inclusion, and then to see, with clear and disembodied sight, the cosmic, eternal, and divine, and thereby to return, as from a long exile, to union with the God from Whom birth had meant a penal severance. Had not Christ promised that the pure in heart would see God?
Mystics, therefore, appeared in every age, every religion, and every land. Greek Christianity abounded in them despite the Hellenic legacy of reason. St. Augustine was a mystic fountain for the West; his Confessions constituted a return of the soul from created things to God; seldom had any mortal so long conversed with the Deity. St. Anselm the statesman, St. Bernard the organizer, upheld the mystical approach against the rationalism of Roscelin and Abélard. When William of Champeaux was driven from Paris by the logic of Abélard, he founded in a suburb (1108) the Augustinian abbey of St. Victor as a school of theology; and his successors there, Hugh and Richard, ignoring the perilous adventure of young philosophy, based religion not on argument but on the mystical experience of the divine presence. Hugh (d. 1141) saw supernatural sacramental symbols in every phase of creation; Richard (d. 1173) rejected logic and learning, preferred the “heart” to the “head” à la Pascal, and described with
learned logic the mystical rise of the soul to God.
The passion of Italy kindled mysticism into a gospel of revolution. Joachim of Flora—Giovanni dei Gioacchini di Fiori—a noble of Calabria, developed a longing to see Palestine. Impressed on the way by the misery of the people, he dismissed his retinue and continued as a humble pilgrim. Legend tells how he passed an entire Lent in an old well on Mt. Tabor; how, on Easter Sunday, a great splendor appeared to him, and filled him with such divine light that he understood at once all the Scriptures, all the future and the past. Returning to Calabria, he became a Cistercian monk and priest, thirsted for austerity, and retired to a hermitage. Disciples gathered, and he formed them into a new Order of Flora, whose rule of poverty and prayer was approved by Celestine III. In 1200 he sent to Innocent III a series of works which he had written, he said, under divine inspiration, but which, nevertheless, he submitted for papal censorship. Two years later he died.
His writings were based on the Augustinian theory—widely accepted in orthodox circles—that a symbolic concordance existed between the events of the Old Testament and the history of Christendom from the birth of Christ to the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Joachim divided the history of man into three stages: the first, under the rule of God the Father, ended at the Nativity; the second, ruled by the Son, would last, according to apocalyptic calculations, 1260 years; the third, under the Holy Ghost, would be preceded by a time of troubles, of war and poverty and ecclesiastical corruption, and would be ushered in by the rise of a new monastic order which would cleanse the Church, and would realize a worldwide utopia of peace, justice, and happiness.86
Thousands of Christians, including men high in the Church, accepted Joachim’s claim to divine inspiration, and looked hopefully to 1260 as the year of the Second Advent. The Spiritual Franciscans, confident that theirs was the new Order, took courage from Joachim’s teachings; and when they were outlawed by the Church they carried on their propaganda through writings published under his name. In 1254 an edition of Joachim’s main works appeared under the title of The Everlasting Gospel, with a commentary proclaiming that a pope tainted with simony would mark the close of the Second Age, and that in the Third Age the need of sacraments and priests would be ended by the reign of universal love. The book was condemned by the Church; its presumptive author, a Franciscan monk Gherardo da Borgo, was imprisoned for life; but its circulation secretly continued, and deeply affected mystical and heretical thought in Italy and France from St. Francis to Dante—who placed Joachim in paradise.