CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM OF ST. FRANCIS
A sketch of St. Francis of Assisi in modern English may be written in one of three ways. Between these the writer must make his selection; and the third way, which is adopted here, is in some respects the most difficult of all. At least, it would be the most difficult if the other two were not impossible.
First, he may deal with this great and most amazing man as a figure in secular history and a model of social virtues. He may describe this divine demagogue as being, as he probably was, the world’s one quite sincere democrat. He may say (what means very little) that St. Francis was in advance of his age. He may say (what is quite true) that St. Francis anticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the modern mood; the love of nature; the love of animals; the sense of social compassion; the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity and even of property. All those things that nobody understood before Wordsworth were familiar to St. Francis. All those things that were first discovered by Tolstoy could have been taken for granted by St Francis. He could be presented, not only as a human but a humanitarian hero; indeed as the first hero of humanism. He has been described as a sort of morning star of the Renaissance. And in comparison with all these things, his ascetical theology can be ignored or dismissed as a contempory accident, which was fortunately not a fatal accident. His religion can be regarded as a superstition, but an inevitable superstition, from which not even genius could wholly free itself; in the consideration of which it would be unjust to condemn St. Francis for his self denial or unduly chide him for his chastity. It is quite true that even from so detached a standpoint his stature would still appear heroic. There would still be a great deal to be said about the man who tried to end the Crusades by talking to the Saracens or who interceded with the Emporer for the birds. The writer might describe in a purely historical spirit the whole of the Franciscan inspiration that was felt in the painting of Giotto, in the poetry of Dante, in the miracle plays that made possible the modern drama, and in so many things that are already appreciated by the modern culture. He may try to do it, as others have done, almost without raising any religious question at all. In short, he may try to tell the story of a saint without God; which is like being told to write the life of Nansen and forbidden to mention the North Pole.
Second, he may go to the opposite extreme, and decide, as it were, to be defiantly devotional. He may make the theological enthusiasm as thoroughly the theme as it was the theme of the first Franciscans. He may treat religion as the real thing that it was to the real Francis of Assisi. He can find an austere joy, so to speak, in parading the paradoxes of asceticism and all the topsy-turveydom of humility. He can stamp the whole history with the Stigmata, record fasts like fights against a dragon; till in the vague modern mind St Francis is as dark a figure as St. Dominic. In short, he can produce what many in our world will regard as a sort of photographic negative; the reversal of all lights and shades; what the foolish will find as impenetrable as darkness and even many of the wise will find almost as invisible as if it were written in silver upon white. Such a study of St. Francis would be unintelligible to anyone who does not share his religion, perhaps only partly intelligible to anyone who does not share his vocation. According to degrees of judgement, it will be regarded as something too bad or too good for the world. The only difficulty about doing the thing in this way is that it cannot be done. It would really require a saint to write about the life of a saint. In the present case the objections to such a course are insuperable.
Third, he may try to do what I have tried to do here; and as I have already suggested, the course has peculiar problems of its own. The writer may put himself in the position of the ordinary modern outsider and enquirer; as indeed the present writer is still largely and was once entirely in that position. He may start from the standpoint of a man who already admires St. Francis, but only for those things which such a man finds admirable. In other words he may assume that the reader is at least as enlightened as Renan or Matthew Arnold; but in the light of that enlightenment he may try to illimunate what Renan and Matthew Arnold left dark. He may try to use what is understood to explain what is not understood. He may try to say to the modern English reader: “Here is an historical character which is admittedly attractive to many of us already, by its gaiety, its romantic imagination, its spiritual courtesy and cameraderie, but which also contains elements (evidently equally sincere and emphatic) which seem to you quite remote and repulsive. But after all, this man was a man and not half a dozen men. What seems inconsistency to you did not seem inconsistency to him. Let us see whether we can understand, with the help of the existing understanding, these other things that now seem to be doubly dark, by their intrinsic gloom and their ironic contrast.” I do not mean, of course, that I can really reach a psychological completeness in this crude and curt outline. But I mean that this is the only controversial condition that I shall here assume; that I am dealing with the sympathetic outsider. I shall not assume any more or any less agreement than this. A materialist may not care whether the inconsistencies are reconciled or not. A Catholic may not see any inconsistencies to reconcile. But I am here addressing the ordinary common man, sympathetic but sceptical, and I can only rather hazily hope that, by approaching the great saint’s story through what is evidently picturesque and popular about it, I may at least leave the reader understanding a little more than he did before of the consistency of a complete character; that by approaching it in this way, we may at least get a glimmering of why the poet who praised his lord the sun, often hid himself in a dark cavern, of why the saint who was so gentle with his Brother the Wolf was so harsh to his Brother the Ass (as he nicknamed his own body), of why the troubadour who said that love set his heart on fire separated himself from women, of why the singer who rejoiced in the strength and gaiety of the fire deliberately rolled himself in the snow, of why the very song which cries with all the passion of a pagan, “Praised be God for our Sister, Mother Earth, which brings forth varied fruits and grass and glowing flowers,” ends almost with the words “Praised be God for our Sister, the death of the body.”
Renan and Matthew Arnold failed utterly at this test. They were content to follow Francis with their praises until they were stopped by their prejudices; the stubborn prejudices of the sceptic. The moment Francis began to do something they did not understand or did not like, they did not try to understand, still less to like it; they simply turned their backs on the whole business and “walked no more with him.” No man will get any further along a path of historical enquiry in that fashion. These skeptics are really driven to drop the whole subject in despair, to leave the most simple and sincere of all historical characters as a mass of contradiction, to be praised on the principle of the curate’s egg. Arnold refers to the asceticism of Alverno almost hurriedly, as if it were an unlucky but undeniable blot on the beauty of the story; or rather as if it were a pitiable break-down and bathos at the end of story. Now this is simply to be stone-blind to the whole point of any story. To represent Mount Alverno as the mere collapse of Francis is exactly like representing Mount Calvary as the mere collapse of Christ. Those mountains are mountains, whatever else they are, and it is nonsense to say (like the Red Queen) that they are comparitive hollows or negative holes in the ground. They were quite manifestly meant to be culminations and landmarks. To treat the Stigmata as a sort of scandal, to be touched on tenderly but with pain, is exactly like treating the original five wounds of Jesus Christ as five blots on his character. You may dislike the idea of asceticism; you may dislike equally the idea of martyrdom; for that matter you may have an honest and natural dislike of the whole conception of sacrifice symbolised by the cross. But if it is an intelligent dislike, you will retain the capacity for seeing the point of the story; the story of a martyr or even the story of a monk. You will not be able rationally to read the Gospel and regard the Crucifixion as an afterthought or an anti-climax or an accident in the life of Christ; it is obviously the point of the story like the point of a sword, the sword that pierced the heart of the Mother of God.
And you will not be able rationally to read the story of a man presented as a Mirror of Christ without understanding his final phase as a Man of Sorrows, and at least artistically appreciating the appropriatness of his receiving, in a cloud of mystery and isolation, inflicted by no human hand, the unhealed everlasting wounds that heal the world.
The practical reconciliation of the gaiety and austerity I must leave the story itself to suggest. But since I have mentioned Matthew Arnold and Renan and the rationalistic admirers of St. Francis, I will here give a hint of what it seems to me most advisable for such readers to keep in mind. These distinguished writers found things like the Stigmata a stumbling block because to them a religion was a philosophy. It was an impersonal thing; and it is only the most personal passion that provides here an approximate earthly parallel. A man will not roll in the snow for a stream of tendency by which all things fulfil the law of their being. He will not go without food in the name of something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. He will do things like this, or pretty like this, under quite a different impulse. He will do these things when he is in love. The first fact to realise about St Francis is involved with the first fact with which his story starts; that when he said from the first that he was a Troubadour, and said later that he was a Troubadour of a newer and nobler romance, he was not using a mere metaphor, but understood himself much better than the scholars understand him. He was, to the last agonies of asceticism, a Troubadour. He was a Lover. He was a lover of God and he was really and truly a lover of men; possibly a much rarer mystical vocation. A lover of men is very nearly the opposite of a philanthropist; indeed the pedantry of the Greek word carries something like a satire on itself. A philanthropist may be said to love anthropoids. But as St. Francis did not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ. Say, if you think so, that he was a lunatic loving an imaginary person; but an imaginary person, not an imaginary idea. And for the modern reader the clue to the asceticism and all the rest can be found in the stories of lovers when they seemed to be rather like lunatics. Tell it as the tale of one of the Troubadours, and the wild things he would do for his lady, and the whole of the modern puzzle disappears. In such a romance there would be no contradiction between the poet gathering flowers in the sun and enduring a freezing vigil in the snow, between his praising all earthly and bodily beauty and then refusing to eat, and between his glorifying gold and purple and perversely going in rags, between his showing pathetically a hunger for a happy life and a thirst for a heroic death. All these riddles would be easily be resolved in the simplicity of any noble love; only this was so noble a love that nine out of ten men have hardly even heard of it. We shall see later that this parallel of the earthly lover has a very practical relation to the problems of his life, as to his relations with his father and his friends and their families. The modern reader will almost always find that if he could only find this kind of love as a reality, he could feel this kind of extravagance as a romance. But I only note it here as a preliminary point because, though it is very far from being the final truth in the matter, it is the best approach to it. The reader cannot even begin to see the sense of a story that may well seem to him a very wild one, until he understands that to this great mystic his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love affair. And the only purpose of this prefatory chapter is to explain the limits of the present book; which is only addressed to that part of the modern world which finds in St. Francis a certain modern difficulty; which can admire him yet hardly accept him, or which can appreciate the saint almost without the sanctity. And my only claim even to attempt such a task is that I myself have for so long been in various stages of such a condition. Many thousand things that I now partly comprehend I should have thought utterly incomprehensible, many things I now hold sacred I should have scouted as utterly superstitious, many things that seem to me lucid and enlightened now they are seen from the inside I should honestly have called dark and barbarous seen from the outside, when long ago in those days of boyhood my fancy first caught fire with the glory of Francis of Assisi. I too have lived in Arcady; but even in Arcady I met one walking in a brown habit who loved the woods better than Pan. The figure in the brown habit stands above the hearth in the room where I write, and alone among many such images, at no stage of my pilgrimage has he ever seemed to me a stranger. There is something of a harmony between the hearth and the firelight and my own first pleasure in his words about the brother fire; for he stands far enough back in my memory to mingle with all those more domestic dreams of the first days. Even the fantastic shadows thrown by fire make a sort of shadow pantomine that belongs to the nursery; yet the shadows were even then the shadows of his favourite beast and birds, as he saw them, grotesque but haloed with the love of God. His Brother Wolf and Brother Sheep seemed then almost like the Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit of a more Christian Uncle Remus. I have come slowly to see many more marvellous aspects of such a man, but I have never lost that one. His figure stands on a sort of bridge connecting my boyhood with my conversion to many other things; for the romance of his religion has penetrated even the rationalism of that vague Victorian time. In so far as I have had this experience, I may be able to lead others a little further along that road; but only a very little further. Nobody knows better than I do now that it is a road upon which angels might fear to tread; but though I am certain of failure I am not altogether overcome by fear; for he suffered fools gladly.
CHAPTER II
THE WORLD ST. FRANCIS FOUND
The modern innovation which has substituted journalism for history, or for that tradition that is the gossip of history, has had at least one definite effect. It has insured that everybody should only hear the end of every story. Journalists are in the habit of printing above the very last chapters of their serial stories (when the hero and the heroine are just about to embrace in the last chapter, as only an unfathomable perversity prevented them from doing so in the first) the rather misleading words, “You can only begin this story here.” But even this is not a complete parallel; for the journals do give some sort of a summary of the story, while they never give anything remotely resembling a summary of the history. Newspapers not only deal with news, but they deal with everything as if it were entirely new. It is exactly in the same fashion that we read that Admiral Bangs has been shot, which is the first intimation we have that he has ever been born.
There is something singularly significant in the use which journalism makes of its stores of biography. It never thinks of publishing the life until it is publishing the death. As it deals with individuals it deals with institutions and ideas. After the Great War our public began to be told of all sorts of nations being emancipated. It had never been told a word about their being enslaved. We were called upon to judge of the justice of settlements, when we had never been allowed to hear of the very existence of the quarrels. People would think it pedantic to talk about the Serbian epics and they prefer to talk about the Yugo-Slavonic international new diplomacy; and they are quite excited about something they call Czecho-Slovakia without apparently having ever heard about Bohemia. Things that are as old as Europe are regarded as more recent than the very latest claims pegged out on the prairies of America. It is very exciting; like the last act of a play to people who have only come into the theatre just before the curtain falls. But it does not conduce exactly to knowing what it is all about. To those content with the mere fact of a pistol-shot or a passionate embrace, such a leisurely manner of patronising the drama may be recommended. To those tormented by a mere intellectual curiosity about who is kissing or killing whom, it is unsatisfactory.
Most modern history, especially in England, suffers from the same imperfection as journalism. At best it only tells half the story of Christendom; and that the second half without the first half. Men for whom reason begins with the Reformation, can never give a complete account of anything, for they have to start with institutions whose origin they can never explain, or generally even imagine. Just as we hear of the admiral being shot but have never heard of his being born, so we all heard a great deal about the dissolution of the monasteries, but we heard next to nothing about the creation of the monasteries. Now this sort of history would be hopelessly insufficient, even for an intelligent man who hated the monasteries. It is hopelessly insufficient in connection with institutions that many intelligent men do in a quite healthy spirit hate. For instance, it is possible that some of us have occasionally seen some mention, by our learned leader-writers, of an obscure institution called the Spanish Inquisition. Well, it really is an obscure institution, according to them and the histories they read. It is obscure because its origin is obscure. Protestant history simply begins with the horrible thing in possession, as the pantomine begins with the demon king in the goblin kitchen. It is likely enough that it was, especially towards the end, a horrible thing that might be haunted by demons; but if we say this was so, we have no notion why it was so. To understand the Spanish Inquisition it would be necessary to discover two things that we have never dreamed of bothering about; what Spain was and what an Inquisition was. The former would bring in the whole great question about the Crusade against the Moors; and by what heroic chivalry a European nation freed itself of an alien domination from Africa. The latter would bring in the whole business of the other Crusade against the Albigensians, and why men loved and hated that nihilistic vision from Asia. Unless we understand that there was in these things originally the rush and romance of a Crusade, we cannot understand how they came to deceive men or drag them on towards evil. The Crusaders doubtless abused their victory, but there was a victory to abuse. And where there is victory there is valour in the field and popularity in the forum. There is some sort of enthusiasm that encourages excesses or covers faults. For instance, I for one have maintained from very early days the responsibility of the English for their atrocious treatment of the Irish. But it would be quite unfair to describe even the devilry of ‘98 and leave out altogether all mention of the war with Napoleon. It would be unjust to suggest that the English mind was bent on nothing but the death of Emmett, when it was more probably full of the glory of the death of Nelson. Unfortunately ‘98 was very far from being the last date of such dirty work; and only a few years ago our politicians started trying to rule by random robbing and killing, while gently remonstrating with the Irish for their memory of old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago. But however badly we may think of the Black-and tan business, it would be unjust to forget that most of us were not thinking of Black-and-Tan but of khaki; and that khaki had just then a noble and national connotation covering many things. To write of the war with Ireland and leave out the war against Prussia, and the English sincerity about it, would be unjust to the English. So to talk about the torture-engine as if it had been a hideous toy is unjust to the Spanish. It does not tell sensibly from the start the story of what the Spaniards did, and why. We may concede to our contempories that in any case it is not a story that ends well. We do not insist that in their version it should begin well. What we complain of is that in their version it does not begin at all. They are only in at the death; or even, like Lord Tom Noddy, to late for the hanging. It is quite true that it was more horrible than any hanging; but they only gather, so to speak, the very ashes of the ashes; the fag-end of the faggot.
The case of the Inquisition is here taken at random, for it is one among any number illustrating the same thing; and not because it is especially connected with St. Francis, in whatever sense it may have been connected with St Dominic. It may well be suggested later indeed that St. Francis is unintelligible, just as St. Dominic is unintelligible, unless we do understand something of what the thirteenth century meant by heresy and a crusade. But for the moment I use it as a lesser example for a much larger purpose. It is to point out that to begin the story of St. Francis with the birth of St Francis would be to miss the whole point of the story, or rather not to tell the story at all. And it is to suggest that the modern tail-foremost type of journalistic history perpetually fails us. We learn about reformers without knowing what they had to reform, about rebels without knowing what they rebelled against, of memorials that are not connected with any memory and restorations of things that apparently never existed before. Even at the expense of this chapter appearing disproportionate, it is necessary to say something about the great movements that led up to the entrance of the founder of the Franciscans. It may seem to mean describing a world, or even a universe to describe a man. It will inevitably mean that the world or the universe will be described with a few desperate generalisations in a few abrupt sentences. But so far from its meaning that we shall see a very small figure under so large a sky, it will mean that we must measure the sky before we can begin to measure the towering stature of the man.
And this phrase alone brings me to the preliminary suggestions that seem necessary before even a slight sketch of the life of St. Francis. It is necessary to realise, in however rude and elementary a fashion, into what sort of a world St. Francis entered and what had been the history of that world, at least in so far as it affected him. It is necessary to have, if only in a few sentences, a sort of preface in the form of an Outline of History, if we may borrow the phrase of Mr. Wells. in the case of Mr. Wells himself, it is evident that the distinguished novelist suffered the same disadvantage as if he had been obliged to write a novel of which he hated the hero. To write history and hate Rome, both pagan and papal, is to hate everything that has happened. It comes very nearly to hating humanity on purely humanitarian grounds. To dislike both the priest and the soldier, both the laurels of the warrior and the lilies of the saint, is to suffer a division from the mass of mankind for which not all the dexterities of the finest and most flexible of modern intelligences can compensate. A much wider sympathy is needed for the historical setting of St. Francis, himself both a soldier and a saint. I will therefore conclude this chapter with a few generalisations about the world St. Francis found.
Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds. As a matter of individual belief, I should of course express it by saying they are not sufficiently catholic to be Catholic. But I am not going to discuss here the doctrinal truths of Christianity, but simply the broad historical fact of Christianity, as it might appear to a really enlightened and imaginative person even if he were not a Christian. What I mean at the moment is that the majority of doubts are made out of details. In the course of random reading a man comes across a pagan custom that strikes him as picturesque or a Christian action that strikes him as cruel; but he does not enlarge his mind sufficiently to see the main truth about pagan custom or the Christian reaction against it. Until we understand, not necessarily in detail, but in their big bulk and proportion that pagan progress and that Christian reaction, we cannot really understand the point of history at which St. Francis appears or what his great popular mission was all about.
Now everybody knows, I imagine, that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were an awakening of the world. They were a fresh flowering of culture and the creative arts after a long spell of much sterner and even more sterile experience which we call the Dark Ages. They may be called an emancipation; they were certainly an end; an end of what may at least seem a harsher and more inhuman time. But what was it that was ended? From what was it that men were emancipated? That is where there is a real collision and point at issue between the different philosophies of history. On the merely external and secular side, it has been truly said that men awoke from a sleep; but there had been dreams in that sleep of a mystical and sometimes of a monstrous kind. In that rationalistic routine into which most modern historians have fallen, it is considered enough to say that they were emancipated from mere savage superstition and advanced towards mere civilised enlightenment. Now this is the big blunder that stands as a stumbling-block at the very beginning of our story. Anybody who supposes that the Dark Ages were plain darkness and nothing else, and that the dawn of the thirteenth century was plain daylight and nothing else, will not be able to make head or tail of the human story of St. Francis of Assisi. The truth is that the joy of St. Francis and his Jongleurs de Dieu was not merely an awakening. It was something which cannot be understood without understanding their own mystical creed. The end of the Dark Ages was not merely the end of a sleep. It was certainly not merely the end of a superstitious enslavement. It was the end of something belonging to a quite definite but quite different order of ideas.
It was the end of a penance; or, if it be preferred, a purgation. It marked the moment when a certain spiritual expiation had been finally worked out and certain spiritual diseases had been finally expelled from the system. They had been expelled by an era of asceticism, which was the only thing that could have expelled them. Christianity had entered the world to cure the world; and she cured it in the only way in which it could be cured. Viewed merely in an external and experimental fashion, the whole of the high civilisation of antiquity had ended in the learning of a certain lesson; that is, in its conversion to Christianity. But that lesson was a psychological fact as well as a theological faith. That pagan civilization had indeed been a very high civilisation. It would not weaken our thesis, it might even strengthen it, to say that it was the highest that humanity ever reached. It had discovered its still unrivalled arts of poetry and plastic representation; it had discovered its own permanent political ideals; it had discovered its own clear system of logic and language. But above all, it had discovered its own mistake. That mistake was too deep to be ideally defined; the short-hand of it is to call it the mistake of nature-worship. It might almost as truly be called the mistake of being natural; and it was a very natural mistake. The Greeks, the great guides and pioneers of pagan antiquity, started out with the idea of something splendidly obvious and direct; the idea that if a man walked straight ahead on the high road of reason and nature, he would come to no harm; especially if he was, as the Greek was, eminently enlightened and intelligent. We might be so flippant as to say that man was simply to follow his nose, so long as it was a Greek nose. And the case of the Greeks themselves is alone enough to illustrate the strange but certain fatality that attends upon this fallacy. No sooner did the Greeks themselves begin to follow their own noses and their own notion of being natural, than the queerest thing in history seems to have happened to them. It was much too queer to be an easy matter to discuss. It may be remarked that our more repulsive realists never give us the benefit of their realism. Their studies of unsavoury subjects never take note of the testimony they bear to the truths of traditional morality. But if we had the taste for such things, we could cite thousands of such things as part of the case for Christian morals. And an instance of this is found in the fact that nobody has written, in this sense, a real moral history of the Greeks. Nobody has seen the scale or the strangeness of the story. The wisest men in the world set out to be natural; and the most unnatural thing in the world was the very first thing they did. The immediate effect of saluting the sun and the sunny sanity of nature was a perversion spreading like a pestilence. The greatest and even the purest philosophers could not apparently avoid this low sort of lunacy. Why? It would seem simple enough for the people whose poets had conceived Helen of Troy, whose sculptors had carved the Venus of Milo, to remain healthy on the point. The truth is people who worship health cannot remain healthy on the point. When Man goes straight he goes crooked. When he follows his nose he manages somehow to put his nose out of joint, or even to cut off his nose to spite his face; and that in accordance with something much deeper in human nature than nature-worshippers could ever understand. It was the discovery of that deeper thing, humanly speaking, that constituted the conversion to Christianity. There is a bias in a man like the bias on a bowl; and Christianity was the discovery of how to correct the bias and therefore hit the mark. There are many who will smile at the saying; but it is profoundly true to say that the glad good news brought by the Gospel was the news of original sin.
Rome rose at the expense of her Greek teachers largely because she did not entirely consent to be taught these tricks. She had a much more decent tradition; but she ultimately suffered from the same fallacy in her religious tradition; which was necessarily in no small degree the heathen tradition of nature worship. What was the matter with the whole heathen civilisation was that there nothing for the mass of men in the way of mysticism, except that concerned with the mystery of the nameless forces of nature, such as sex and growth and death. In the Roman Empire also, long before the end, we find nature-worship inevitably producing things that are against nature. Cases like that of Nero have passed into a proverb when Sadism sat on a throne brazen in the broad daylight. But the truth I mean is something much more subtle and universal than a conventional catalogue of atrocities. What had happened to the human imagination, as a whole, was that the whole world was coloured by dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions; by natural passions becoming unnatural passions. Thus the effect of treating sex as only one innocent natural thing was that every other innocent natural thing became soaked and sodden with sex. For sex cannot be admitted to a mere equality among elementary emotions or experiences like eating and sleeping. The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant. There is something dangerous and disproportionate in its place in human nature, for whatever reason; and it does really need a special purification and dedication. The modern talk about sex being free like any other sense, about the body being beautiful like any tree or flower, is either a description of the Garden of Eden or a piece of thoroughly bad psychology, of which the world grew weary two thousand years ago.
This is not to be confused with mere self-righteous sensationalism about the wickedness of the pagan world. It was not so much that the pagan world was wicked as that it was good enough to realise that its paganism was becoming wicked, or rather it was on the logical high road to wickedness. I mean that there was no future for “natural magic”; to deepen it was only to darken it into black magic. There was no future for it; because in the past it had only been innocent because it was young. We might say it had only been innocent because it was shallow. Pagans were wiser that paganism; that is why the pagans became Christians. Thousands of them had philosophy and family virtues and military honour to hold them up; but by this time the purely popular thing called religion was certainly dragging them down. When this reaction against the evil is allowed for, it is true to repeat that it was an evil that was everywhere. In another and more literal sense its name was Pan.
It was no metaphor to say that these people needed a new heaven and a new earth; for they had really defiled their own earth and even their own heaven. How could their case be met by looking at the sky, when erotic legends were scrawled in stars across it; how could they learn anything from the love of birds and flowers after the sort of love stories that were told of them? It is impossible here to multiply evidences, and one small example may stand for the rest. We know what sort of sentimental associations are called up to us by the phrase “a garden”; and how we think mostly of the memory of melancholy and innocent romances, or quite as often of some gracious maiden lady or kindly old person pottering under a yew hedge, perhaps in sight of a village spire. Then, let anyone who knows a little Latin poetry recall suddenly what would have once stood in place of the sun-dial or the fountain, obscene and monstrous in the sun; and of what sort was the god of their gardens.
Nothing could purge this obsession but a religion that was literally unearthly. It was no good telling such people to have a natural religion full of stars and flowers; there was not a flower or even a star that had not been stained. They had to go into the desert where they could find no flowers or even into the cavern where they could see no stars. Into that desert and that cavern the highest human intellect entered for some four centuries; and it was the very wisest thing it could do. Nothing but the stark supernatural stood up for its salvation; if God could not save it, certainly the gods could not. The early Church called the gods of paganism devils; and the Early Church was perfectly right. Whatever natural religion may have had to do with their beginnings, nothing but fiends now inhabited those hollow shrines. Pan was nothing but panic. Venus was nothing but venereal vice. I do not mean for a moment, of course, that all the individual pagans were of this character even to the end; but it was as individuals that they differed from it. Nothing distinguishes paganism from Christianity so clearly as the fact that the individual thing called philosophy had little or nothing to do with the social thing called religion. Anyhow it was no good to preach natural religion to people to whom nature had grown as unnatural as any religion. They knew much better than we do what was the matter with them and what sort of demons at once tempted and tormented them; and they wrote across that great space of history the text; “This sort goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
Now the historical importance of St. Francis and the transition from the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries, lies in the fact that they marked the end of this expiation. Men at the close of the dark Ages may have been rude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen tribes, more barbarous than themselves, but they were clean. They were like children; the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the clean pleasure of children. We have to conceive them in Europe as a whole living under little local governments, feudal in so far as they were a survival of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and carrying a far more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial as far as Rome still ruled as a great legend. But in Italy something had survived more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity; the republic, Italy, was dotted with little states, largely democratic in their ideals, and often filled with real citizens. But the city no longer lay open as under the Roman peace, but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war and all the citizens had to be soldiers. One of these stood in a steep and striking position on the wooded hills of Umbria; and its name was Assisi. Out of its deep gate under its high turrets was to come the message that was the gospel of the hour, “Your warfare is accomplished, your iniquity is pardoned.” But it was out of all these fragmentary things of feudalism and freedom and remains of Roman Law that there were to rise, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, vast and almost universal, the mighty civilisation of the Middle Ages.
It is an exaggeration to attribute it entirely to the inspiration of any one man, even the most original genius of the thirteenth century. Its elementary ethics of fraternity and fair play had never been entirely extinct and Christendom had never been anything less than Christian. The great truisms about justice and pity can be found in the rudest monastic records of the barbaric transition or the stiffest maxims of the Byzantine decline. And early in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a larger moral movement had clearly begun, but what may fairly be said of it is this, that over all those first movements there was still something of that ancient austerity that came from the long penitentiary period. It was the twilight of the morning; but it was still a grey twilight. This may be illustrated by the mere mention of two or three of these reforms before the Franciscan reform. The monastic institution itself, of course, was far older than all these things; indeed it was undoubtedly almost as old as Christianity. Its counsels of perfection had always taken the form of vows of chastity and poverty and obedience. With these unworldly aims it had long ago civilised a great part of the world. The monks had taught people to plough and sow as well as to read and write; indeed they had taught the people nearly everything the people knew. But it may truly be said that the monks were severely practical, in the sense that they not only practical but also severe; though they were generally severe with themselves and practical for other people. All this early monastic movement had long ago settled down and doubtless often deteriorated; but when we come to the first medieval movements this sterner character is still apparent. Three examples may be taken to illustrate the point.
First, the ancient social mould of slavery was already beginning to melt. Not only was the slave turning into a serf, who was practically free as regards his own farm and family life, but many lords were freeing slaves and serfs altogether. This was done under the pressure of the priests; but especially it was done in the spirit of a penance. In one sense, of course, any Catholic society must have an atmosphere of penance; but I am speaking of that sterner spirit of penance which had expiated the excesses of paganism. There was about such restitutions the atmosphere of the death-bed; as many of them were doubtless were examples of death-bed repentance. A very honest atheist with whom I once debated made use of the expression, “Men have only been kept in slavery by the fear of hell.” As I pointed out to him, if he had said that men had only been freed from slavery by the fear of hell, he would have at least have been referring to an unquestionable historical fact.
Another example was the sweeping reform of Church discipline by Pope Gregory the Seventh. It really was a reform, undertaken from the highest motives and having the healthiest results; it conducted a searching inquisition against simony or the financial corruption of the clergy; it insisted on a more serious and self-sacrificing ideal for the life of the parish priest. But the very fact that this largely took the form of making universal the obligation of celibacy will strike the note of something which, however noble, would seem to many to be vaguely negative. The third example is in one sense the strongest of all. For the third example was a war; a heroic war and for many of us a holy war; but still having all the stark and terrible responsibilities of war. There is no space here to say all that should be said about the true nature of the Crusades. Everybody knows that in the very darkest hour of the Dark Ages a sort of heresy had sprung up in Arabia and become a new religion of a military but nomadic sort; invoking the name of Mahomet. Intrinsically it had a character found in many heresies from the Moslem to the Monist. It seemed to the heretic a sane simplification of religion; while it seems to a Catholic an insane simplification of religion, because it simplifies all to a single idea and so loses the breadth and balance of Catholicism. Anyhow its objective character was that of a military danger to Christendom and Christendom had struck at the very heart of it, in seeking to reconquer the Holy Places. The great Duke Godfrey and the first Christians who stormed Jerusalem were heroes if there were any in the world; but they were the heroes of a tragedy.
Now I have taken these two or three examples of the earlier medieval movements in order to note about them one general character, which refers back to the penance that followed paganism. There is something in all these movements that is bracing even while it is still bleak, like a wind blowing between the clefts of the mountains. That wind, austere and pure, of which the poet speaks, is really the spirit of the time, for it is the wind of a world that has at last been purified. To anyone who can appreciate atmospheres there is something clear and clean about the atmosphere of this crude and often harsh society. Its very lusts are clean; for they no have longer any smell of perversion. Its very cruelties are clean; they are not the luxurious cruelties of the amphitheatre. They come either of a very simple horror at blasphemy or a very simple fury at an insult. Gradually against this grey background beauty begins to appear, as something really fresh and delicate and above all surprising. Love returning is no longer what was once called platonic but what is still called chivalric love. The flowers and stars are have recovered their first innocence. Fire and water are felt to be worthy to be the brother and sister of a saint. The purge of paganism is complete at last.
For water itself has been washed. Fire itself has been purified as by fire. Water is no longer the water into which slaves were flung to feed the fishes. Fire is no longer that fire through which children were passed to Moloch. Flowers smell no more of the forgotten garlands gathered in the garden of Priapus; stars stand no more as signs of the far frigidity of gods as cold as those cold fires. They are like all new things newly made and awaiting new names, from one who shall come to name them. Neither the universe nor the earth have now any longer the old sinister significance of the world. They await a new reconciliation with man, but they are already capable of being reconciled. Man has stripped from his soul the last rag of nature worship, and can return to nature.
While it was yet twilight a figure appeared silently and suddenly on a little hill above the city, dark against the fading darkness. For it was the end of a long and stern night, a night of vigil, not unvisited by stars. He stood with his hands lifted, as in so many statues and pictures, and about him was a burst of birds singing; and behind him was the break of day.
CHAPTER III
FRANCIS THE FIGHTER
According to one tale, which if not true would be none the less typical, the very name of St. Francis was not so much a name as a nickname. There would be something akin to his familiar and popular instinct in the notion that he was nicknamed very much as an ordinary schoolboy might be called “Frenchy” at school. According to this version his name was not Francis at all but John; and his companions called him “Francesco”, or “The little Frenchman” because of his passion for the French poetry of the Troubadours. The more probable story is that his mother had him named John when he was born in the absence of his father, who shortly returned from a visit to France, Where his commercial success had filled him with so much enthusiasm for French taste and social usage that he gave his son the new name signifying the Frank or Frenchman. In either case the name had a certain significance, as connecting Francis from the first with what he himself regarded as the romantic fairy land of the Troubadours.
The name of the father was Pietro Bernadone and he was a substantial citizen of the guild of the cloth merchants in the town of Assisi. It is hard to describe the position of such a man without some appreciation of such a guild and even of such a town. It did not exactly correspond to anything that is meant in modern times either by a merchant or a man of business or a tradesman, or anything that exists under the conditions of capitalism. Bernadone may have employed people but he was not an employer; that is; he did not belong to an employing class as distinct from an employed class. The person we definitely hear of his employing is his son Francis; who, one is tempted to guess, was about the last person that any man of business would employ if it were convenient to employ anybody else. He was rich, as a peasant may be rich by the work of his own family; but he evidently expected his own family to work in a way almost as plain as a peasant’s. He was a prominent citizen, but he belonged to a social order which existed to prevent him being too prominent to be a citizen. It kept all such people on their own simple level, and no prosperity connoted that escape from drudgery by which in modern times the lad might have seemed to be a lord or a fine gentleman or something other than the cloth merchant’s son. This is a rule that is proved even in the exception. Francis was one of those people who are popular with everybody in any case; and his guiless swagger as a Troubadour and leader of French fashions made him a sort of romantic ringleader among the young men of the town. He threw money about both in extravagance and benevolence, in a way native to a man who never, all his life, exactly understood what money was. This moved his mother to mingled exultation and exasperation and she said, as any tradesman’s wife might say anywhere: “He is more like a prince than our son.” But one of the earliest glimpses we have of him shows him as simply selling bales of cloth from a booth in the market; which his mother may or may not have believed to be one of the habits of princes. This first glimpse of the young man in the market is symbolic in more ways than one. An incident occurred which is perhaps the shortest and sharpest summary that could be given of certain curious things which were a part of his character, long before it was transfigured by transcendental faith. While he was selling velvet and fine embroideries to some solid merchant of the town a beggar came imploring alms; evidently in a somewhat tactless manner. It was a rude and simple society and there were no laws to punish a starving man for expressing his need for food, such as have been established in a more humanitarian age; and the lack of any organised police permitted such persons to pester the wealthy without any great danger. But there was I believe, in many places a local custom of the guild forbidding outsiders to interrupt a fair bargain; and it is possible that some such thing put the mendicant more than normally in the wrong. Francis had all his life a great liking for people who had been put hopelessly in the wrong. On this occasion he seems to have dealt with the double interview with rather a divided mind; certainly with distraction, possibly with irritation. Perhaps he was all the more uneasy because of the almost fastidious standard of manners that came to him quite naturally. All are agreed that politeness flowed from him from the first, like one of the public fountains in such a sunny Italian market place. He might have written among his own poems as his own motto that verse of Mr. Belloc’s poem—
“Of Courtesy, it is much less Than courage of heart or holiness Yet in my walks it seems to me That the grace of God is in Courtesy.”
Nobody ever doubted that Francis Bernadone had courage of heart, even of the most manly and military sort; and a time was to come when there was quite as little doubt about the holiness and grace of God. But I think that if there was one thing about which he was punctilious, it was punctiliousness. If there was one thing of which so humble a man could be said to be proud, he was proud of good manners. Only behind his perfectly natural urbanity were wider and even wilder possibilities, of which we get the first flash in this trivial incident. Anyhow Francis was evidently torn two ways with the botheration of two talkers, but finished his business with the merchant somehow; and when he had finished it, found the beggar was gone. Francis leapt from his booth, left all the bales of velvet and embroidery behind him apparently unprotected, and went racing across the market-place like an arrow from the bow. Still running, he threaded the labrynth of the narrow and crooked streets of the little town, looking for his beggar whom he eventually discovered; and loaded the astonished mendicant with money. Then he straightened himself, so to speak, and swore before God that he would never all his life refuse help to a poor man. The sweeping simplicity of this undertaking is extremely characteristic. Never was any man so little afraid of his own promises. His life was one riot of rash vows; of rash vows that turned out right.
The first biographers of Francis, naturally alive with the great religious revolution that he wrought, equally naturally looked back to his first years chiefly for omens and signs of such a spiritual earthquake. But writing at a greater distance, we shall not decrease that dramatic effect, but rather increase it, if we realise that there was not at this time any external sign of anything particularly mystical about the young man. He had not anything of that early sense of his vocation that has belonged to some of the saints. Over and above his main ambition to win fame as a French poet, he would seem to have most often thought of winning fame as a soldier. He was born kind; he was brave in the normal boyish fashion; but he drew the line in both in kindness and bravery pretty well where most boys would have drawn it; for instance, he had the human horror of leprosy of which few normal people felt any need to be ashamed. He had the love of gay and bright apparel which was inherent in the heraldic taste of medieval times and seems altogether to have been rather a festive figure. If he did not paint the town red, he would probably have preferred to paint it all the colours of the rainbow, as in a medieval picture. But in this story of the young man in gay garments scampering after the vanishing beggar in rags there are certain notes of his natural individuality that must be assumed from first to last.
For instance, there is the spirit of swiftness. In a sense he continued running for the rest of his life, as he ran after the beggar. Because nearly all the errands he ran were errands of mercy, there appeared in his portraiture a mere element of mildness which was true in the truest sense, but is easily misunderstood. A certain precipitancy was the very poise of his soul. This saint should be represented among the other saints as angels were sometimes represented in pictures of angels; with flying feet or with feathers; in the spirit of the text that makes angels winds and messengers a flaming fire. It is a curiosity of language that courage actually means running; and some of our sceptics will no doubt demonstrate that courage really means running away. But his courage was running, in the sense of rushing. With all his gentleness, there was originally something of impatience in his impetuosity. The psychological truth about it illustrates very well the modern muddle about the word “practical.” If we mean by what is practical what is most immediately practicable, we merely mean what is easiest. In that sense St. Francis was very impractical, and his ultimate aims were very unworldly. Bit if we mean by practicality a preference for prompt effort and energy over doubt or delay, he was very practical indeed. Some might call him a madman, but he was the very reverse of a dreamer. Nobody would be likely to call him a man of business; but he was very emphatically a man of action. In some of his early experiments he was rather too much of a man of action; he acted too soon and was too practical to be prudent. But at every turn of his extraordinary career we shall find him flinging himself around corners in the most unexpected fashion, as when he flew through the streets after the beggar.
Another element implied in the story, which was already partially a natural instinct, before it became supernatural ideal, was something that had never perhaps been wholly lost in those little republics of medieval Italy. It was something very puzzling to some people; something clearer as a rule to Southerners than to Northeners, and I think to Catholics than to Protestants; the quite natural assumption of the equality of men. It has nothing necessarily to do with the Franciscan love for men; on the contrary one of its merely practical tests is the equality of the duel. Perhaps a gentleman will never be fully an egalitarian until he can really quarrel with his servant. But it was an antecedant condition of the Franciscan brotherhood; and we feel it in this early and secular incident. Francis, I fancy, felt a real doubt about which he must attend to, the beggar or the merchant; and having attended to the merchant, he turned to attend the beggar; he thought of them as two men. This is a thing much more difficult to describe, in a society from which it is absent, but it was the original basis of the whole business; it was why the popular movement arose in that sort of place and that sort of man. His imaginative magnanimity rose like a tower to starry heights that might well seem dizzy and even crazy; but it was founded on this high table land of human equality.
I have taken this the first among a hundred tales of the youth of St. Francis, and dwelt on its significance a little, because until we have learned to look for the significance there will often seem to be little but a sort of light sentiment in telling the story. St. Francis is not a proper person to be patronised with merely “pretty” stories. There are often any number of them; but they are too often used so as to be a sort of sentimental sediment of the medieval world, instead of being, as the saint emphatically is, a challenge to the modern world. We must take his human development somewhat more seriously; and the next story in which we get a glimpse of it is in a very different setting. But in exactly the same way it opens, as if by accident, certain abysses of the mind and perhaps of the unconscious mind. Francis still looks more or less like an ordinary young man; and it is only when we look at him as an ordinary young man, that we realise what an extraordinary young man he was.
War had broken out between Assisi and Perugia. It is now fashionable to say in a satirical spirit that such wars did not so much break out as to go on idefinitely between the city states of medieval Italy. It will be enough to say here that if one of those medieval wars had really gone on without stopping for a century, it might possibly have come within a remote distance of killing as many people as we kill in a year, in one of our great modern scientific wars between our great modern industrial empires. But the citizens of the medieval republic were certainly under the limitation of only being asked to die for the things with which they had always lived, the house they inhabited, the shrines they venerated and the rulers and representatives they new; and had not the larger vision calling for them to die for the latest rumours about remote colonies as reported in anonymous newspapers. And if we infer from our own experience that war paralyzed civilization, we must at least admit that these warring towns turned out a number of paralytics who go by the names of Dante and Michael Angelo, Ariosto and Titian, Leonardo and Columbus, not to mention Catherine of Siena and the subject of this story. While we lament all this local patriotism as a hubbub of the Dark Ages, it must seem a rather curious fact that about three quarters of the greatest men who ever lived came out of these little towns and were often engaged in these little wars. It remains to be seen what will ultimately come out of our large towns; but there has been no sign of anything of this sort since they became large; and I have sometimes been haunted by a fancy of my youth, that these things will not come till there is a city wall around Clapham and the tocsin is rung at night to arm the citizens of Wimbledon.
Anyhow, the tocsin was rung at Assisi and the citizens armed, and among them was Francis the son of the cloth merchant. He went out to fight with some company of lancers and in some fight or other he and his little band were taken prisoners. To me it seems most probable that there had been some tale of treason or cowardice about the disaster; for we are told that there was one of the captives with whom his fellow-prisoners flatly refused to associate even in prison; and when this happens in such circumstances, it is generally because the military blame for the surrender is thrown on some individual. Anyhow, somebody noted a small but rather curious thing, though it might seem rather negative than positive. Francis, we are told, moved among his captive companions with all his characteristic courtesy and even conviviality, “liberal and hilarious” as somebody said of him, resolved to keep up their spirits and his own. And when he came across the mysterious outcast, traitor or coward or whatever he was called, he simply treated him exactly like all the rest, neither with coldness or compassion, but with the same unaffected gaiety and good fellowship. But if there had been present in that prison someone with a sort of second sight about the truth and trend of spiritual things, he might have known he was in the presence of something new and seemingly almost anarchic; a deep tide driving out to uncharted seas of charity. For in this sense there was really something wanting in Francis of Assisi, something to which he was blind that he might see better and more beautiful things. All those limits in good fellowship and good form, all those landmarks of social life that divide the tolerable and the intolerable, all those social scruples and conventional conditions that are normal and even noble in ordinary men, all those things that hold many decent societies together, could never hold this man at all. He liked as he liked; he seems to have liked everybody, but especially those whom everybody disliked him for liking. Something very vast and universal was already present in that narrow dungeon; and such a seer might have seen in its darkness that red halo of caritas caritatum which marks one saint among saints as well as among men. He might well have heard the first whisper of that wild blessing that afterwards took the form of a blasphemy; “He listens to those whom God himself will not listen”.
But though such a seer might have seen such a truth, it is exceedingly doubtful if Francis himself saw it. He had acted out of an unconscious largeness, or in the fine medieval phrase largesse, within himself, something might almost have been lawless if it had not been reaching out to a more divine law; but is doubtful whether he new the law was divine. It is evident that he had not at this time any notion of abandoning the military, still less of adopting the monastic life. It is true that there is not, as pacifists and prigs imagine, the least inconsistency between loving men and fighting them, if we fight them fairly and for a good cause. But it seems to me that there was more than this involved; that the mind of the young man was really running towards a military morality in any case. About this time the first calamity crossed his path in the form of a malady which was to revisit him many times and hamper his headlong career. Sickness made him more serious; but one fancies it would only have made him a more serious soldier, or even more serious about soldiering. And while he was recovering, something rather larger than the little fueds and raids of the Italian towns opened an avenue of adventure and ambition. The crown of Sicily, a considerable centre of controversy at the time, was apparently claimed by a certain Gauthier de Brienne, and the Papal cause to aid which Gauthier was called in aroused enthusiasm among a number of young Assisians, including Francis, who proposed to march into Apulia on the count’s behalf; perhaps his French name had something to do with it. For it must never be forgotten that though that world was in one sense a world of little things, it was a world of little things concerned with great things. There was more internationalism in the lands dotted with tiny republics than in the huge homogeneous impenetrable national divisions of to-day. The legal authority of the Assisian magistrates might hardly reach further than a bow-shot from their high embattled city walls. But their sympathies might be with the ride of the Normans through Sicily or the palace of the Troubadours at Toulouse; with the Emperor throned in the German forests or the great Pope dying in the exile of Salerno. Above all, it must be remembered that when the interests of an age are mainly religious they must be universal. Nothing can be more universal than the universe. And there are several things about the religious position at that particular moment which modern people not unnaturally fail to realise. For one thing, modern people naturally think of people so remote as ancient people, and even early people. We feel vaguely that these things happened in the first ages of the Church. The Church was already a good deal more than a thousand years old. That is, the Church was then rather older than France is now, a great deal older than England is now. And she looked old then; almost as old as she does now; possibly older than she does now. The Church looked like great Charlemagne with the long white beard, who had already fought a hundred wars with the heathen, and in the legend was bidden by an angel to go forth and fight once more though he was two thousand years old. The Church had topped her thousand years and turned the corner for the second thousand; she had come through the Dark Ages in which nothing could be done except desperate fighting against the barbarians and the stubborn repitition of the creed. The creed was still being repeated after the victory or escape; but it is not unnatural to suppose that there was something a little monotonous about the repitition. The Church looked old then as now; and there were some who thought her dying as now. In truth orthodoxy was not dead but it may have been dull; it is certain that some people began to think it dull. The Troubadours of the Provencal movement had already begun to take that turn or twist towards Oriental fancies and the paradox of pessimism, which always comes to Europeans as something fresh when their own sanity seems to be something stale. It is likely enough that after all those centuries of hopeless war without and ruthless asceticism within, the official orthodoxy seemed to be something stale. The freshness and freedom of the first Christians seemed then as much as now a lost and almost prehistoric age of gold. Rome was still more rational than anything else; the Church was really wiser but it may well have seemed wearier than the world. There was something more adventurous and alluring, perhaps, about the mad metaphysics that had been blown across out of Asia. Dreams were gathering like dark clouds over the Midi to break in a thunder of anathema and civil war. Only the light lay on the great plain around Rome; but the light was blank and the plain was flat; and there was no stir in the still air and the immemorial silence about the sacred town.
High in the dark house of Assisi Francesco Bernadonne slept and dreamed of arms. There came to him in the darkness a vision splendid with swords, patterned after the cross in the Crusading fashion, of spears and shields and helmets hung in a high armoury, all bearing the sacred sign. When he awoke he accepted the dream as a trumpet bidding him to the battlefield, and rushed out to take horse and arms. He delighted in all the exercises of chivalry; and was evidently an accomplished cavalier and fighting man by the tests of the camp. He would doubtless at any time have preferred a Christian sort of chivalry; but it seems clear that he was also in a mood which thirsted for glory, though in him that glory would always have been identical with honour. He was not without some vision of that wreath of laurel which Ceasar has left for all the Latins. As he rode out to war the great gate in the deep wall of Assisi resounded with his last boast, “I shall come back a great prince.”
A little way along the road his sickness rose again and threw him. It seems highly probable, in the light of his impetuous temper, that he had ridden away long before he was fit to move. And in the darkness of this second and fare more desolating interruption, he seems to have had another dream in which a voice said to him, “You have mistaken the meaning of the vision. Return to your own town.” And Francis trailed back in his sickness to Assisi, a very dismal and disappointed and perhaps even derided figure, with nothing to do but wait for what should happen next. It was his first descent into a dark ravine that is called the valley of humiliation, which seemed to him very rocky and desolate, but in which he was afterwards to find many flowers.
But he was not only disappointed and humiliated; he was very much puzzled and bewildered. He still firmly believed that his two dreams must have meant something; and he could not imagine what they could possibly mean. It was while he was drifting, one might even say mooning, about the streets of Assisi and the fields outside the city wall, that an incident occurred to him which has not always been immediately connected with the business of the dreams, but which seems to me the obvious culmination of them. He was riding listlessly in some wayside place, apparently in the open country, when he saw a figure coming along the road towards him and halted; for he saw it was a leper. And he knew instantly that his courage was challenged, not as the world challenges, but as one would challenge who knew the secrets of the heart of a man. What he saw advancing was not the banner and spears of Perugia, from which it never occurred to him to shrink; nor the armies that fought for the crown of Sicily, of which he had always thought as a courageous man thinks of mere vulgar danger. Francis Bernadone saw his fear coming up the road towards him; the fear that comes from within and not without; though it stood white and horrible in the sunlight. For once in the long rush of his life his soul must have stood still. Then he sprang from his horse, knowing nothing between stillness and swiftness, and rushed on the leper and threw his arms around him. It was the beginning of a long vocation of ministry among many lepers, for whom he did many services; to this man he gave what money he could and mounted and rode on. We do not know how far he rode, or with what sense of the things around him; but it is said that when he looked back, he could see no figure on the road.
CHAPTER IV
FRANCIS THE BUILDER
We have now reached the great break in the life of Francis of Assisi; the point at which something happened to him that must remain greatly dark to most of us, who are ordinary and selfish men whom God has not broken to make anew.
In dealing with this difficult passage, especially for my own purpose of making things moderately easy for the more secular sympathiser, I have hesitated as to the more proper course; and have eventually decided to state first of all what happened, with little more of a hint of what I imagine to have been the meaning of what happened. The fuller meaning may be debated more easily afterwards, when it was unfolded in the full Franciscan life. Anyway, what happened was this. The story very largely revolves around the ruins of the Church of St. Damien, an old shrine in Assisi which was apparently neglected and falling to pieces. Here Francis was in the habit of praying before the crucifix during those dark and aimless days of transition which followed the tragical collapse of all his military ambitions, probably made bitter by some loss of social prestige terrible to his sensitive spirit. As he did so he heard a voice saying to him, “Francis, seest thou not that my house is in ruins? Go and restore it for me.”
Francis sprang up and went. To go and do something was one of the driving demands of his nature; probably he had gone and done it before he had at all thoroughly thought out what he had done. In any case what he had done was something very decisive and immediately very disastrous for his singular social career. In the coarse conventional language of the uncomprehending world, he stole. From his own enthusiastic point of view, he extended to his venerable father Peter Bernadone the exquisite excitement and inestimable privilege of assisting, more or less unconsciously, in the rebuilding of St. Damiens Church. In point of fact what he did first was to sell his own horse and then go off and sell several bales of his father’s cloth, making the sign of the cross over them to indicate their pious and charitable destination. Peter Bernadone did not see things in this light. Peter Bernadone indeed had not very much light to see by, so far as understanding the genius and temperament of his extraordinary son was concerned. Instead of understanding in what sort of a wind and flame of abstract appetites the lad was living, instead of simply telling him (as the priest practically did later) that he done an indefensible thing with the best intentions, old Bernadone took up the matter in the hardest style; in a legal and literal fashion. He used absolute political powers like a heathen father, and himself put his son under lock and key as a vulgar thief. It would appear that the cry was caught up among many with whom the unlucky Francis had once been popular; and altogether, in his efforts to build up the house of God he had only succeeded in bringing his own house about his ears and lying buried under the ruins. The quarrel dragged drearily through several stages; at one time the wretched young man seems to have disappeared underground, so to speak, into some cavern or cellar where he remained huddled hopelessly in the darkness. Anyhow, it was his blackest moment; the whole world had turned over; the whole world was on top of him.
When he came out, it was only perhaps gradually that anybody grasped that something had happened. He and his father were summoned in the court of the bishop; for Francis had refused the authority of all legal tribunals. The bishop addressed some remarks to him, full of that excellent common sense which the Catholic Church keeps permanently as the background for all the fiery attitudes of her saints. He told Francis that he must unquestionably restore the money to his father; that no blessing could follow a work done by unjust methods; and in short (to put it crudely) if the young fanatic would give back his money to the old fool, the incident would then terminate. There was a new air about Francis. He was no longer crushed, still less crawling, so far as his father was concerned; yet his words do not, I think, indicate either just indignation or wanton insult or anything in the nature of a mere continuation of the quarrel. They are rather remotely akin to the mysterious utterances of his great model, “What have I to do with thee?” or even the terrible “Touch me not.”
He stood up before them all and said, “Up to this time I have called Pietro Bernadone father, but now I am the servant of God. Not only the money but everything that can be called his I will restore to my father, even the very clothes he has given me.” And he rent off all his garments except one; and they saw that it was a hair-shirt.
He piled the garments in a heap on the floor and threw the money on top of them. Then he turned to the bishop, and received his blessing, like one who turns his back on society; and, according to the account, went out as he was into the cold world. Apparently it was literally a cold world at the moment, and snow was on the ground. A curious detail, very deep in its significance, I fancy, is given in the same account of this great crisis in his life. He went out half-naked in his hair shirt into the winter woods, walking the frozen ground between the frosty trees: a man without a father. He was penniless, he was parentless, he was to all appearances without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world; and as he went under the frosty trees, he burst suddenly into song.
It was apparently noted as remarkable that the language in which he sang was French, or that Provencal which was called for convenience French. It was not his native language; and it was in his native language that he ultimately won fame as a poet; indeed St. Francis is one of the very first of the national poets in the purely national dialects of Europe. But it was the language with which all his most boyish ardours and ambitions had been identified; it was for him pre-eminently the language of romance. That it broke from him in this extraordinary extremity seems to me something at first sight very strange and in the last analysis very significant. What that significance was, or may well have been, I will try to suggest in the subsequent chapter; it is enough to indicate here that the whole philosophy of St. Francis revolved around the idea of a new supernatural light on natural things, which meant the ultimate recovery not the ultimate refusal of natural things. And for the purpose of this purely narrative part of the business, it is enough to record that while he wandered in the winter forest in his hair-shirt, like the very wildest of the hermits, he sang in the tongue of the Troubadours.
Meanwhile the narrative naturally reverts to the problem of the ruined or at least neglected church, which had been the starting point of the saint’s innocent crime and beatific punishment. That problem still predominated in his mind and was soon engaging his insatiable activities; but they were activities of a new sort; and he made no more attempts to interfere with commercial ethics of the town of Assisi. There had dawned on him one of those great paradoxes that are also platitudes. He realised that the way to build a church is not to become entangled in bargains and, to him, rather bewildering questions of legal claim. The way to build a church is not to pay for it, certainly not with somebody else’s money. The way to build a church is not to pay for it even with your own money. The way to build a church is to build it.
He went about by himself collecting stones. He begged all the people he met to give him stones. In fact he became a new sort of beggar, reversing the parable; a beggar who asks not for bread but stone. Probably, as happened to him again and again throughout his extraordinary existence, the very queerness of the request gave it a sort of popularity; and all sorts of idle and luxurious people fell in with the benevolent project, as they would have done with a bet. He worked with his own hands at the rebuilding of the church, dragging the material like a beast of burden and learning the very last and lowest lessons of toil. A vast number of stories are told about Francis at this as at every other period of his life; but for the purpose here, which is one of simplification, it is best to dwell on this definite re-entrance of the saint into the world by the low gate of physical labour. There does indeed run through the whole of his life a sort of double meaning, like his shadow thrown upon the wall. All his actions had something of the character of an allegory; and it is likely enough that some leaden-witted scientific historian may some day try to prove that he himself was never anything but an allegory. It is true enough in this sense that he was labouring at a double task, and rebuilding something else as well as the church of St. Damien. He was not only discovering the general lesson that his glory was not to be in overthrowing men in battle but in building up the positive and creative monuments of peace. He was truly building up something else, or beginning to build it up; something that has often enough fallen into ruin but has never been past rebuilding; a church that could always be built anew though it had rotted away to its first foundation stone, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.
The next stage in his progress is probably marked by his transferring the same energies of architectural reconstruction to the little church of St. Mary of the Angels at the Portiuncula. He had already done something of the same kind at a church dedicated to St. Peter; and that quality in his life noted above, which made it seem like a symbolical drama, led many of his most devout biographers to note the numerical symbolism of the three churches. There was at any rate a more historical and practical symbolism about two of them. For the original church of St. Damian afterwards became the seat of his striking experiment of a female order, and of the pure and spiritual romance of St. Clare. And the church of the Portiuncula will remain forever as one of the great historic buildings of the world; for it was here that he gathered the little knot of friends and enthusiasts; it was the home of many homeless men. At this time, however, it is not clear that he had the definite idea of any such monastic developments. How early the plan appeared in his own mind it is of course impossible to say; but on the face of events it first takes the form of a few friends who attached themselves to him one by one because they shared his own passion for simplicity. The account given of the form of their dedication is, however, significant; for it was that of an invocation of the simplification of life as suggested in the New Testament. The adoration of Christ had been a part of the man’s passionate nature for a long time past. But the imitation of Christ, as a sort of plan or ordered scheme of life, may in that sense may be said to begin here.
The two men who have the credit, apparently, of having first perceived something of what was happening in the world of the soul were a solid and wealthy citizen named Bernard of Quintaville and a canon from a neighbouring church named Peter. It is the more to their credit because Francis, if one may put it so, was by this time wallowing in poverty and association with lepers and ragged mendicants; and the two were men with much to give up; the one of comforts in the world and the other of ambition in the church. Bernard the rich burgher did quite literally and finally sell all he had and give it to the poor. Peter did even more; for he descended from a chair of spiritual authority, probably when he was already a man of mature years and therefore of fixed mental habits, to follow an extravagant young eccentric whom most people probably regarded as a maniac. What it was which they had caught a glimpse, of which Francis had seen the glory, may be suggested later so far as it can be suggested at all. At this stage we need profess to see no more than all Assisi saw, and that something not altogether unworthy of comment. The citizens of Assisi only saw the camel go in triumph through the eye of the needle and God do impossible things because to him all things were possible; only a priest who rent his robes like the Publican and not like the Pharisee and a rich man who went away joyful, for he had no possessions.
These three strange figures are said to have built themselves a sort of hut or den adjoining the leper hospital. There they talked to each other, in the intervals of drudgery and danger (for it needed ten times more courage to look after a leper than to fight for the crown of Sicily), in the terms of their new life, almost like children talking a secret language. Of these individual elements on their first friendship we can say little with certainty; but it is certain that they remained friends to the end. Bernard of Quintaville occupies in the story something of the position of Sir Bedivere, “first made and latest left of Arthur’s knights,” for he reappears at the right hand side of the saint on his deathbed and receives some sort of special blessing. But all these things belong to another historical world and were quite remote from the ragged and fantastic trio in their tumble-down hut. They were not monks except perhaps in the most literal and archaic sense which was identical with hermits. They were, so to speak, three solitaries living together socially, but not as a society. The whole thing seems to have been intensely individual, as seen from the outside doubtless individual to the point of insanity. The stir of something that had in it the promise of a movement or a mission can first be felt as I have said in the affair of the appeal to the New Testament.
It was a sort of sors vigiliana applied to the Bible; a practice not unknown among Protestants though open to their criticism, one would think, as being rather a superstition of pagans. Anyhow it seems almost the opposite of searching the Scriptures to open them at random; but St. Francis certainly opened them at random. According to one story, he merely made the sign of the cross over the volume of the Gospel and opened it at three places reading three texts. The first was the tale of the rich young man whose refusal to sell all his goods was the occasion of the great paradox about the camel and the needle. The second was the commandment to the disciples to take nothing with them on their journey, neither scrip nor staff nor any money. The third was that saying, literally to be called crucial, that the follower of Christ must also carry his cross. There is a somewhat similar story of St. Francis finding one of these texts, almost as accidentally, merely in listening to what happened to be the Gospel of the day. But from the former version at least it would seem that the incident occurred very early indeed in his new life; for it was after this oracle, apparently, that Bernard the first disciple rushed forth and scattered all his goods among the poor. If this be so, it would seem that nothing followed it for the moment except the individual ascetical life with the hut for a hermitage. It must of course have been a rather public sort of hermitage, but it was none the less in a very real sense withdrawn from the world. St. Simeon Stylites on the top of his pillar was in one sense an exceedingly public character; but there was something a little singular in his situation for all that. It must be presumed that most people thought the situation of Francis singular, that some even thought it too singular. There was inevitably indeed in any Catholic society something ultimate and even subconscious that was at least capable of comprehending it better than a pagan or puritan society could comprehend it. But we must not at this stage, I think, exaggerate this potential public sympathy. As has already been suggested, the Church and all its institutions had already the air of being old and settled and sensible things, the monastic institutions amongst the rest. Common sense was commoner in the Middle Ages, I think, than in our own rather jumpy journalistic age; but men like Francis are not common in any age, nor are they to be fully understood merely by the exercise of common sense. The thirteenth century was certainly a progressive period; perhaps the only really progressive period in human history. But it can truly be called progressive precisely because its progress was very orderly. It is really and truly an example of an epoch of reforms without revolutions. But the reforms were not only progressive but very practical; and they were very much to the advantage of highly practical institutions; the towns and the trading guilds and the manual crafts. Now the solid men of town and guild in the time of Francis of Assisi were probably very solid indeed. They were much more economically equal, they were much more justly governed in their own economic environment, than the moderns who struggle madly between starvation and the monopolist prizes of capitalism; but it likely enough that the majority of citizens were as hard-headed as peasants. Certainly the behaviour of the venerable Pietro Bernadone does not indicate a delicate sympathy with the fine and almost fanciful subtleties of the Franciscan spirit. And we cannot measure the beauty and originality of this strange spiritual adventure, unless we have the humour and human sympathy to put into plain words how it would have looked to such an unsympathetic person at the time when it happened. In the next chapter I shall make an attempt, inevitably inadequate, to indicate the inside of the story of the building of the three churches and the little hut. In this chapter I have but outlined it from the outside. And in concluding that chapter I ask the reader to remember and realize what the story really looked like, when thus seen from the outside. Given a critic of rather coarse common sense, with no feeling about the incident except annoyance, and how would the story seem to stand?
A young fool or rascal is caught robbing his father and selling goods which he ought to guard; and the only explanation he will offer is that a loud voice from nowhere spoke in his ear and told him to mend the cracks and holes in a particular wall. He then declared himself naturally independant of all powers corresponding to the police or magistrates, and takes refuge with an amiable bishop who is forced to remonstrate with him and tell him he is wrong. He then proceeds to take off his clothes in public and practically throw them at his father; announcing at the same time that his father is not his father at all. He then runs about the town asking everybody he meets to give him fragments of buildings or building materials, apparently with reference to his old monomania about mending the wall. It may be an excellent thing that cracks should be filled up, but preferably not by somebody who is himself cracked; and architectural restoration like other things is not best performed by builders who, as we should say, have a tile loose. Finally the wretched youth relapses into rags and squalor and practically crawls away into the gutter. That is the spectacle that Francis must have presented to a very large number of his neighbours and friends.
How he lived at all must have seemed to them dubious; but presumably he already begged for bread as he had begged for building materials. But he was always very careful to beg for the blackest or worst bread he could get, for the stalest crusts or something less luxurious than the crumbs which the dogs eat, and which fell from the rich man’s table. Thus he probably fared worse than an ordinary beggar; for the beggar would eat the best he could get and the saint ate the worst he could get. In plain fact he was ready to live on refuse; and it was probably something much uglier as an experience than the refined simplicity which vegetarians and water drinkers would call the simple life. As he dealt with the question of food, so he apparently dealt with the question of clothing. He dealt with it, that is, upon the same principle of taking what he could get, and not even the best of what he could get. According to one story he changed clothes with a beggar; and he would doubtless have been content to change them with a scarecrow. In another version he got hold of the rough brown tunic of a peasant, but presumably only because the peasant gave him his very oldest brown tunic, which was probably very old indeed. Most peasants have few changes of clothing to give away; and some peasants are not specially inclined to give them away unless absolutely necessary. It is said that in place of the girdle which he had flung off (perhaps with the more symbolic scorn because it probably carried the purse or wallet by the fashion of the period) he picked up a rope more or less at random, because it was lying near, and tied it round his waist. He undoubtedly meant it as a shabby expedient; rather as the very destitute tramp will sometimes tie his clothes together with a piece of string. He meant to strike the note of collecting his clothes anyway, like rags from a succession of dust bins. Ten years later that make-shift costume was the uniform of five thousand men; and a hundred years later, in that, for a pontifical panoply, they laid great Dante in the grave.
CHAPTER V
LE JONGLEUR DE DIEU
Many signs and symbols might yet be used to give a hint of what really happened in the mind of the young poet of Assisi. Indeed they are at once too numerous for selection and yet too slight for satisfaction. But one of them may be adumbrated in this small and apparently accidental fact; that when he and his secular companions carried their pageant of poetry through the town, they called themselves Troubadours. But when he and his spiritual companions came out to do their spiritual work in the world, they were called by their leader the Jongleurs de Dieu.
Nothing has been said here at any length of the great culture of the Troubadours as it appeared in Provence or Languedoc, great as was their influence in history and their influence on St. Francis. Something more May be said of them when we come to summarise his relation to history; it is enough to note here in a few sentences the facts about them that were relevant to him, and especially the particular point now in question, which was the most relevant of all. Everybody knows who the Troubadours were; everybody knows that very early in the Middle Ages, in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, there arose a civilisation in Southern France which threatened to rival or eclipse the rising tradition of Paris. Its chief product was a school of poetry, or rather more especially a school of poets. They were primarily love-poets, though they were often also satirists and critics of things in general. Their picturesque posture in history is largely due to the fact that they sang their own poems and often played their own accompaniments, on the light musical instruments of the period; they were minstrels as well as men of letters. Allied to their love-poetry were other institutions of a decorative and fanciful kind concerned with the same theme. There was what was called the “Gay Science,” the attempt to reduce to a sort of system the fine shades of flirtation and philandering. There were the things called Courts of Love, in which the same delicate subjects were dealt with legal pomp and pedantry. There is one point in this part of the business that must be remembered in relation to St. Francis. There were manifest moral dangers in all this superb sentimentalism; but it is a mistake to suppose that its only danger of exaggeration was in the direction of sensualism. There was a strain in the southern romance that was actually an excess of spirituality; just as the pessimist heresy it produced was in one sense an excess of spirituality. The love was not always animal; sometimes it was so airy as to be almost allegorical. The reader realises that the lady is the most beautiful being that can possibly exist, only he has occasional doubts as to whether she does exist. Dante owed something to the Troubadours; and the critical debates about his ideal woman are an excellent example of these doubts. We know that Beatrice was not his wife, but we should in any case be equally sure she was not his mistress; and some critics have even suggested that she was nothing at all, so to speak, except his muse. This idea of Beatrice as an allegorical figure is, I believe, unsound; it would seem unsound to any man who has read the Vit Nuova and has been in love. But the very fact that it is possible to suggest it illustrates something abstract and scholastic in these medieval passions. But though they were abstract passions they were very passionate passions. These men could feel almost like lovers, even about allegories and abstractions. It is necessary to realise that St. Francis was talking the true language of a troubadour when he said that he also had a most glorious and gracious lady and that her name was poverty.
But the particular point to be noted here is not concerned so much with the word Troubadour as with the word Jongleur. It is especially concerned with the transition from one to the other; and for this it is necessary to grasp another detail about the poets of the Gay Science. A jongleur was not the same thing as a troubadour, even if the same man were both a troubadour and a jongleur. More often, I believe, they were separate men as well as separate trades. In many cases, apparently the two men would walk the world together like companions in arms, or rather companions in arts. The jongleur was properly a joculator or jester; sometimes he was what we should call a juggler. This is the point, I imagine, of the tale about Taillifer the Jongleur at the Battle of Hastings, who sang the death of Roland while he tossed up his sword and caught it, as a juggler catches balls. Sometimes he may been even a tumbler; like that acrobat in the beautiful legend who was called “The Tumbler of Our Lady,” because he turned head over heels and stood on his head before the image of the Blessed Virgin, for which he was nobly thanked and comforted by her and the whole company of heaven. In the ordinary way, we may imagine, the troubadour would exalt the company with earnest and solemn strains of love and then the jongleur would do his turn as a sort as a sort of comic relief. A glorious medieval romance remains to be written about two such companions wandering through the world. At any rate, if there is one place in which the Franciscan spirit can be found outside the true Franciscan story, it is in the tale of the Tumbler of our Lady. And when St. Francis called his followers the Jongleurs de Dieu, he meant something very like the Tumblers of our Lady.
Somewhere in that transition from the ambition of the Troubadour to the antics of the Tumbler is hidden, as under a parable, the truth of St. Francis. Of the two minstrels or entertainers, the jester was presumably the servant or at least the secondary figure. St. Francis really meant what he said when he said he had found the secret of life in being the servant and the secondary figure. There was to be found ultimately in such service a freedom almost amounting to frivolity. It was comparable to the condition of the jongleur because it almost amounted to frivolity. The jester could be free when the knight was rigid; and it was possible to be a jester in the service which is perfect freedom. This parallel of the two poets or minstrels is perhaps the best preliminary and external statement of the Franciscan change of heart, being conceived under an image with which the imagination of the modern world has a certain sympathy. There was, of course, a great deal more than this involved; and we must endeavour however insufficiently to penetrate past the image to the idea. It is so far like the tumblers that it is really to many people a topsy-turvy idea.
Francis, at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind; which was really like the reversal of a complete somersault, in that by coming full circle it came back, or apparently came back, to the same normal posture. It is necessary to use the grotesque simile of an acrobatic antic, because there is hardly any other figure that will make the fact clear. But in the inward sense it was a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the effects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as extravagant as any parallel can make them. He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands.
If we apply this parable of Our Lady’s Tumbler to the case, we shall come very near to the point of it. Now it really is a fact that any scene such as a landscape can sometimes be more clearly and freshly seen if it is seen upside down. There have been landscape-painters who adopted the most startling and pantomimic postures in order to look at it for a moment in that fashion. Thus that inverted vision, so much more bright and quaint and arresting, does bear a certain resemblance to the world which a mystic like St. Francis sees every day. But herein is the essential part of the parable. Our Lady’s Tumbler did not stand on his head in order to see flowers and trees as a clearer or quainter vision. He did not do so; and it would never have occurred to him to do so. Our Lady’s Tumbler stood on his head to please Our Lady. If St. Francis had done the same thing, as he was quite capable of doing, it would originally have been from the same motive; a motive of a purely supernatural thought. It would be after this that his enthusiasm would extend itself and give a sort of halo to the edges of all earthly things. This is why it is not true to represent St. Francis as a mere romantic forerunner of the Renaissance and a revival of natural pleasures for their own sake. The whole point of him was that the secret of recovering the natural pleasures lay in regarding them in the light of a supernatural pleasure. In other words, he repeated in his own person that historic process noted in the introductory chapter; the vigil of asceticism which ends in the vision of a natural world made new. But in the personal case there was even more than this; there were elements that make the parallel of the Jongleur or Tumbler even more appropriate than this.
It may be suspected that in that black cell or cave Francis passed the blackest hours of his life. By nature he was the sort of man who has that vanity which is the opposite of pride; that vanity which is very near to humility. He never despised his fellow creatures and therefore he never despised the opinion of his fellow creatures; including the admiration of his fellow creatures. All that part of his human nature had suffered the heaviest and most crushing blows. It is possible that after his humiliating return from his frustrated military campaign he was called a coward. It is certain that after his quarrel with his father about the bales of cloth he was called a thief. And even those who had sympathised most with him, the priest whose church he had restored, the bishop whose blessing he had received, had evidently treated him with an almost humorous amiability which left only too clear the ultimate conclusion of the matter. He had made a fool of himself. Any man who has been young, who has ridden horses or thought himself ready for a fight, who has fancied himself as a troubadour and accepted the conventions of comradeship, will appreciate the ponderous and crushing weight of that simple phrase. The conversion of St. Francis, like the conversion of St. Paul, involved his being in some sense flung suddenly from a horse; but in a sense it was an even worse fall; for it was a war-horse. Anyhow, there was not a rag of him left that was not ridiculous. Everybody knew that at the best he had made a fool of himself. It was a solid objective fact, like the stones in the road, that he had made a fool of himself. He saw himself as an object, very small and distinct like a fly walking on a clear window pane; and it was unmistakably a fool. And as he stared at the word “fool” written in luminous letters before him, the word itself began to shine and change.
We used to be told in the nursery that if a man were to bore a hole through the centre of the earth and climb continually down and down, there would come a moment at the centre when he would seem to be climbing up and up. I do not know whether this is true. The reason I do not know whether it is true is that I never happened to bore a hole through the centre of the earth, still less to crawl through it. If I do not know what this reversal or inversion feels like, it is because I have never been there. And this also is an allegory. It is certain that the writer, it is even possible that the reader, is an ordinary person who has never been there. We cannot follow St. Francis to that final spiritual overturn in which complete humiliation becomes complete holiness or happiness, because we have never been there. I for one do not profess to follow it any further than that first breaking down of the romantic barricades of boyish vanity, which I have suggested in the last paragraph. And even that paragraph, of course, is merely conjectural, an individual guess at what he may have felt; but he may have felt something quite different. But whatever else it was, it was so far analogous to the story of the man making a tunnel through the earth that it did mean a man going down and down until at some mysterious moment he begins to go up and up. We have never gone up like that because we have never gone down like that; we are obviously incapable of saying that it does not happen; and the more candidly and calmly we read human history, and especially the history of the wisest men, the more we shall come to the conclusion that it does happen. Of the intrinsic internal essence of the experience, I make no pretence of writing at all. But the external effect of it, for the purpose of this narrative, may be expressed by saying that when Francis came forth from his cave of vision, he was wearing the same word “fool” as a feather in his cap; as a crest or even a crown. He would go on being a fool; he would become more and more of a fool; he would be the court fool of the King of Paradise.
This state can only be represented in symbol; but the symbol of inversion is true in another way. If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise the idea of dependence. There is a Latin and literal connection; for the very word dependence only means hanging. It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hung the world upon nothing. If St. Francis had seen, in one of his strange dreams, the town of Assisi upside down, it need not have differed in a single detail from itself except in being entirely the other way round. But the point is this: that whereas to the normal eye the large masonry of its walls or the massive foundations of its watchtowers and its high citadel would make it seem safer and more permanent, the moment it was turned over the very same weight would make it seem more helpless and more in peril. It is but a symbol; but it happens to fit the psychological fact. St. Francis might love his little town as much as before, or more than before; but the nature of the love would be altered even in being increased. He might see and love every tile on the steep roofs or every bird on the battlements; but he would see them all in a new and divine light of eternal danger and dependence. Instead of being merely proud of his strong city because it could not be moved, he would be thankful to God Almighty that it had not been dropped; he would be thankful to God for not dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling stars. Perhaps St. Peter saw the world so, when he was crucified head-downwards.
It is commonly in a somewhat cynical sense that men have said, “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.” It was in a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that St. Francis said, “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.” It was by this deliberate idea of starting from zero, from the dark nothingness of his own deserts, that he did come to enjoy even earthly things as few people have enjoyed them; and they are in themselves the best working example of the idea. For there is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset. But there is more than this involved, and more indeed than is easily to be expressed in words. It is not only true that the less a man thinks of himself, the more he thinks of his good luck and of all the gifts of God. It is also true that he sees more of the things themselves when he sees more of their origin; for their origin is a part of them and indeed the most important part of them. Thus they become more extraordinary by being explained. He has more wonder at them but less fear of them; for a thing is really wonderful when it is significant and not when it is insignificant; and a monster, shapeless or dumb or merely destructive, may be larger than the mountains, but is still in a literal sense insignificant. For a mystic like St. Francis the monsters had a meaning; that is, they had delivered their message. They spoke no longer in an unknown tongue. That is the meaning of all those stories whether legendary or historical, in which he appears as a magician speaking the language of beasts and birds. The mystic will have nothing to do with mere mystery; mere mystery is generally a mystery of iniquity.
The transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate and illuminate God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates all things. It is rather like the reversal whereby a lover might say at first sight that a lady looked like a flower, and say afterwards that all flowers reminded him of his lady. A saint and a poet standing by the same flower might seem to say the same thing; but indeed though they would both be telling the truth, they would be telling different truths. For one the joy of life is a cause of faith, for the other rather a result of faith. But one effect of the difference is that the sense of a divine dependence, which for the artist is like the brilliant levin-blaze, for the saint is like the broad daylight. Being in some mystical sense on the other side of things, he sees things go forth from the divine as children going forth from a familiar and accepted home, instead of meeting them as they come out, as most of us do, upon the roads of the world. And it is the paradox that by this privilege he is more familiar, more free and fraternal, more carelessly hospitable than we. For us the elements are like heralds who tell us with trumpet and tabard that we are drawing near the city of a great king; but he hails them with an old familiarity that is almost an old frivolity. He calls them his Brother Fire and his Sister Water.
So arises out of this almost nihilistic abyss the noble thing that is called Praise; which no one will ever understand while he identifies it with nature-worship or pantheistic optimism. When we say that a poet praises the whole creation, we commonly mean only that he praises the whole cosmos. But this sort of poet does really praise creation, in the sense of the act of creation. He praises the passage or transition from nonentity to entity; there falls here also the shadow of that archetypal image of the bridge, which has given to the priest his archaic and mysterious name. The mystic who passes through the moment when there is nothing but God does in some sense behold the beginningless beginnings in which there was really nothing else. He not only appreciates everything but the nothing of which everything was made. In a fashion he endures and answers even the earthquake irony of the Book of Job; in some sense he is there when the foundations of the world are laid, with the morning stars singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy. That is but a distant adumbration of the reason why the Franciscan, ragged, penniless, homeless and apparently hopeless, did indeed come forth singing such songs as might come from the stars of morning; and shouting, a son of God.
This sense of the great gratitude and the sublime dependence was not a phrase or even a sentiment; it is the whole point that this was the very rock of reality. It was not a fancy but a fact; rather it is true that beside it all facts are fancies. That we all depend in every detail, at every instant, as a Christian would say upon God, as even an agnostic would say upon existence and the nature of things, is not an illusion of imagination; on the contrary, it is the fundamental fact which we cover up, as with curtains, with the illusion of ordinary life. That ordinary life is an admirable thing in itself, just as imagination is an admirable thing in itself. But it is much more the ordinary life that is made of imagination than the contemplative life. He who has seen the whole world hanging on a hair of the mercy of God has seen the truth; we might almost say the cold truth. He who has seen the vision of his city upside-down has seen it the right way up.
Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank. The converse of this proposition is also true; and it is certain that this gratitude produced, in such men as we are here considering, the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man. The great painter boasted that he mixed all his colours with brains, and the great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts. In this sense it is certain that the mystical method establishes a very healthy external relation to everything else. But it must always be remembered that everything else has for ever fallen into a second place, in comparison with this simple fact of dependence on the divine reality. In so far as ordinary social relations have in them something that seems solid and self-supporting, some sense of being at once buttressed and cushioned; in so far as they establish sanity in the sense of security and security in the sense of self-sufficiency, the man who has seen the world hanging on a hair does have some difficulty in taking them so seriously as that. In so far as even the secular authorities and hierarchies, even the most natural superiorities and the most necessary subordinations, tend at once to put a man in his place, and to make him sure of his position, the man who has seen the human hierarchy upside down will always have something of a smile for its superiorities. In this sense the direct vision of divine reality does disturb solemnities that are sane enough in themselves. The mystic may have added a cubit to his stature; but he generally loses something of his status. He can no longer take himself for granted, merely because he can verify his own existence in a parish register or a family Bible. Such a man may have something of the appearance of the lunatic who has lost his name while preserving his nature; who straightway forgets what manner of man he was. “Hitherto I have called Pietro Bernardone father; but now I am the servant of God.”
All these profound matters must be suggested in short and imperfect phrases; and the shortest statement of one aspect of this illumination is to say that it is the discovery of an infinite debt. It may seem a paradox to say that a man may be transported with joy to discover that he is in debt. But this is only because in commercial cases the creditor does not generally share the transports of joy; especially when the debt is by hypothesis infinite and therefore unrecoverable. But here again the parallel of a natural love-story of the nobler sort disposes of the difficulty in a flash. There the infinite creditor does share the joy of the infinite debtor; for indeed they are both debtors and both creditors. In other words debt and dependence do become pleasures in the presence of unspoilt love; the word is used too loosely and luxuriously in popular simplifications like the present; but here the word is really the key. It is the key of all the problems of Franciscan morality which puzzle the merely modern mind; but above all it is the key of asceticism. It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be for ever paying it. He will be for ever giving back what he cannot give back, and cannot be expected to give back. He will be always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks. Men who think they are too modern to understand this are in fact too mean to understand it; we are most of us too mean to practise it. We are not generous enough to be ascetics; one might almost say not genial enough to be ascetics. A man must have magnanimity of surrender, of which he commonly only catches a glimpse in first love, like a glimpse of our lost Eden. But whether he sees it or not, the truth is in that riddle; that the whole world has, or is, only one good thing; and it is a bad debt.
If ever that rarer sort of romantic love, which was the truth that sustained the Troubadours, falls out of fashion and is treated as fiction, we may see some such misunderstanding as that of the modern world about asceticism. For it seems conceivable that some barbarians might try to destroy chivalry in love, as the barbarians ruling in Berlin destroyed chivalry in war. If that were ever so, we should have the same sort of unintelligent sneers and unimaginative questions. Men will ask what selfish sort of woman it must have been who ruthlessly exacted tribute in the form of flowers, or what an avaricious creature she can have been to demand solid gold in the form of a ring; just as they ask what cruel kind of God can have demanded sacrifice and self-denial. They will have lost the clue to all that lovers have meant by love; and will not understand that it was because the thing was not demanded that it was done. But whether or no any such lesser things will throw a light on the greater, it is utterly useless to study a great thing like the Franciscan movement while remaining in the modern mood that murmurs against gloomy asceticism. The whole point about St. Francis of Assisi is that he certainly was ascetical and he certainly was not gloomy. As soon as ever he had been unhorsed by the glorious humiliation of his vision of dependence on the divine love, he flung himself into fasting and vigil exactly as he had flung himself furiously into battle. He had wheeled his charger clean round, but there was no halt or check in the thundering impetuosity of his charge. There was nothing negative about it; it was not a regimen or a stoical simplicity of life. It was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure. He devoured fasting as a man devours food. He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold. And it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure. There undeniably is the historical fact; and there attached to it is another moral fact almost as undeniable. It is certain that he held on this heroic or unnatural course from the moment when he went forth in his hair-shirt into the winter woods to the moment when he desired even in his death agony to lie bare upon the bare ground, to prove that he had and that he was nothing. And we can say, with almost as deep a certainty, that the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once, in all their shining cycles round the world of labouring humanity, looked down upon a happy man.
CHAPTER VI
THE LITTLE POOR MAN
From that cavern, that was a furnace of glowing gratitude and humility, there came forth one of the strongest and strangest and most original personalities that human history has known. He was, among other things, emphatically what we call a character; almost as we speak of a character in a good novel or play. He was not only a humanist but a humourist; a humourist especially in the old English sense of a man always in his humour, going his own way and doing what nobody else would have done. The anecdotes about him have a certain biographical quality of which the most familiar example is Dr. Johnson; which belongs in another way to William Blake or to Charles Lamb. The atmosphere can only be defined by a sort of antithesis; the act is always unexpected and never inappropriate. Before the thing is said or done it cannot even be conjectured; but after it is said or done it is felt to be merely characteristic. It is surprisingly and yet inevitably individual. This quality of abrupt fitness and bewildering consistency belongs to St. Francis in a way that marks him out from most men of his time. Men are learning more and more of the solid social virtues of medieval civilisation; but those impressions are still social rather than individual. The medieval world was far ahead of the modern world in its sense of the things in which all men are at one: death and the daylight of reason and the common conscience that holds communities together. Its generalisations were saner and sounder than the mad materialistic theories of to-day; nobody would have tolerated a Schopenhauer scorning life or a Nietzsche living only for scorn. But the modern world is more subtle in its sense of the things in which men are not at one; in the temperamental varieties and differentiations that make up the personal problems of life. All men who can think themselves now realise that the great schoolmen had a type of thought that was wonderfully clear; but it was as it were deliberately colourless. All are now agreed that the greatest art of the age was the art of public buildings; the popular and communal art of architecture. But it was not an age for the art of portrait-painting. Yet the friends of St. Francis have really contrived to leave behind a portrait; something almost resembling a devout and affectionate caricature. There are lines and colours in it that are personal almost to the extent of being perverse, if one can use the word perversity of an inversion that was also a conversion. Even among the saints he has the air of a sort of eccentric, if one may use the word of one whose eccentricity consisted in always turning towards the centre.
Before resuming the narrative of his first adventures, and the building of the great brotherhood which was the beginning of so merciful a revolution, I think it well to complete this imperfect personal portrait here; and having attempted in the last chapter a tentative description of the process, to add in this chapter a few touches to describe the result. I mean by the result the real man as he was after his first formative experiences; the man whom men met walking about on the Italian roads in his brown tunic tied with a rope. For that man, saving the grace of God, is the explanation of all that followed; men acted quite differently according to whether they had met him or not. If we see afterwards a vast tumult, an appeal to the Pope, mobs of men in brown habits besieging the seats of authority, Papal pronouncements, heretical sessions, trial and triumphant survival, the world full of a new movement, the friar a household word in every corner of Europe, and if we ask why all this happened, we can only approximate to any answer to our own question if we can, in some faint and indirect imaginative fashion, hear one human voice or see one human face under a hood. There is no answer except that Francis Bernardone had happened; and we must try in some sense to see what we should have seen if he had happened to us. In other words, after some groping suggestions about his life from the inside, we must again consider it from the outside; as if he were a stranger coming up the road towards us, along the hills of Umbria, between the olives or the vines.
Francis of Assisi was slight in figure with that sort of slightness which, combined with so much vivacity, gives the impression of smallness. He was probably taller than he looked; middle-sized, his biographers say; he was certainly very active and, considering what he went through, must have been tolerably tough. He was of the brownish Southern colouring, with a dark beard thin and pointed such as appears in pictures under the hoods of elves. And his eyes glowed with the fire that fretted him night and day. There is something about the description of all he said and did which suggests that, even more than most Italians, he turned naturally to a passionate pantomime of gestures. If this was so it is equally certain that with him, even more than with most Italians, the gestures were all gestures of politeness or hospitality. And both these facts, the vivacity and the courtesy, are the outward signs of something that mark him out very distinctively from many who might appear to be more of his kind than they really are. It is truly said that Francis of Assisi was on of the founders of the medieval drama, and therefore of the modern drama. He was the very reverse of a theatrical person in the selfish sense; but for all that he was pre-eminently a dramatic person. This side of him can best be suggested by taking what is commonly regarded as a reposeful quality; what is commonly described as a love of nature. We are compelled to use the term; and it is entirely the wrong term.
St. Francis was not a lover of nature. Properly understood, a lover of nature was precisely what he was not. The phrase implies accepting the material universe as a vague environment, a sort of sentimental pantheism. In the romantic period of literature, in the age of Byron and Scott, it was easy enough to imagine that a hermit in the ruins of a chapel (preferably by moonlight) might find peace and a mild pleasure in the harmony of solemn forests and silent stars, while he pondered over some scroll or illuminated volume, about the liturgical nature of which the author was a little vague. In short, the hermit might love nature as a background. Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. We might say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that divine darkness out of which the divine love had called up every coloured creature one by one. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting, not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play. A bird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose, though it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death. A bush could stop him like a brigand; and indeed he was as ready to welcome the brigand as the bush.
In a word, we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees. St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man. But he did not want to stand against a piece of stage scenery used merely as a background, and inscribed in a general fashion: “Scene; a wood.” In this sense we might say that he was too dramatic for the drama. The scenery would have come to life in his comedies; the walls would really have spoken like Snout the Tinker and the trees would really have come walking to Dunsinane. Everything would have been in the foreground; and in that sense in the footlights. Everything would be in every sense a character. This is the quality in which, as a poet, he is the very opposite of a pantheist. He did not call nature his mother; he called a particular donkey his brother or a particular sparrow his sister. If he had called a pelican his aunt or an elephant his uncle as he might possibly have done, e would still have meant that they were particular creatures assigned by their Creator to particular places; not mere expressions of the evolutionary energy of things. That is where his mysticism is so close to the common sense of the child. A child has no difficulty about understanding that God made the dog and the cat; though he is well aware that the making of dogs and cats out of nothing is a mysterious process beyond his own imagination. But no child would understand what you meant if you mixed up the dog and the cat and everything else into one monster with myriad legs and called it nature. The child would resolutely refuse to make head or tail of any such animal. St. Francis was a mystic, but he believed in mysticism and not in mystification. As a mystic he was the mortal enemy of all those mystics who melt away the edges of things and dissolve an entity into its environment. He was a mystic of the daylight and the darkness; but not a mystic of the twilight. He was the very contrary of that sort of oriental visionary who is only a mystic because he is too much of a sceptic to be a materialist. St. Francis was emphatically a realist, using the word realist in its much more real medieval sense. In this matter he really was akin to the best spirit of his age, which had just won its victory over the nominalism of the twelfth century. In this indeed there was something symbolic in the contemporary art and decoration of his period; as in the art of heraldry. The Franciscan birds and beasts were really rather like heraldic birds and beasts; not in the sense of being fabulous animals but in the sense of being treated as if they were facts, clear and positive and unaffected by the illusions of atmosphere and perspective. In that sense he did see a bird sable on a field azure or a sheep argent on a field vert. But the heraldry of humility was richer than the heraldry of pride; for it saw all these things that God had given as something more precious and unique than the blazonry that princes and peers had only given to themselves. Indeed out of the depths of that surrender it rose higher than the highest titles of the feudal age; than the laurel of Ceasar or the Iron Crown of Lombardy. It is an example of extremes that meet, that the Little Poor Man, who had stripped himself of everything and named himself as nothing, took the same title that has been the wild vaunt of the vanity of the gorgeous Asiatic autocrat, and called himself the Brother of the Sun and Moon.
This quality, of something outstanding and even startling in things as St. Francis saw them, is here important as illustrating a character in his own life. As he saw all things dramatically, so he himself was always dramatic. We have to assume throughout, needless to say, that he was a poet and can only be understood as a poet. But he had one poetic privilege denied to most poets. In that respect indeed he might be called the one happy poet among all the unhappy poets of the world. He was a poet whose whole life was a poem. He was not so much a minstrel merely singing his own songs as a dramatist capable of acting the whole of his own play. The things he said were more imaginative than the things he wrote. The things he did were more imaginative than the things he said. His whole course through life was a series of scenes in which he had a sort of perpetual luck in bringing things to a beautiful crisis. To talk about the art of living has come to sound rather artificial than artistic. But St. Francis did in a definite sense make the very act of living an art, though it was an unpremeditated art. Many of his acts will seem grotesque and puzzling to a rationalistic taste. But they were always acts and not explanations; and they always meant what he meant them to mean. The amazing vividness with which he stamped himself on the memory and imagination of mankind is very largely due to the fact that he was seen again and again under such dramatic conditions. From the moment when he rent his robes and flung them at his father’s feet to the moment when he stretched himself in death on the bare earth in the pattern of the cross, his life was made up of these unconscious attitudes and unhesitating gestures. It would be easy to fill page after page with examples; but I will here pursue the method found convenient everywhere in this short sketch, and take one typical example, dwelling on it with a little more detail than would be possible in a catalogue, in the hope of making the meaning more clear. The example taken here occurred in the last days of his life, but it refers back in a rather curious fashion to the first; and rounds off the remarkable unity of that romance of religion.
The phrase about his brotherhood with the sun and moon, and with the water and the fire, occurs of course in his famous poem called the Canticle of the Creatures or the Canticle of the Sun. He sang it wandering in the meadows in the sunnier season of his own career, when he was pouring upwards into the sky all the passions of a poet. It is a supremely characteristic work, and much of St. Francis could be reconstructed from that work alone. Though in some ways the thing is as simple and straightforward as a ballad, there is a delicate instinct of differentiation in it. Notice, for instance, the sense of sex in inanimate things, which goes far beyond the arbitrary genders of a grammar. It was not for nothing that he called fire his brother, fierce and gay and strong, and water his sister, pure and clear and inviolate. Remember that St. Francis was neither encumbered nor assisted by all that Greek and Roman polytheism turned into allegory, which has been to European poetry often an inspiration, too often a convention. Whether he gained or lost by his contempt of learning, it never occurred to him to connect Neptune and the nymphs with the water or Vulcan and the Cyclops with the flame. This point exactly illustrates what has already been suggested; that, so far from being a revival of paganism, the Franciscan renascence was a sort of fresh start and first awakening after a forgetfulness of paganism. Certainly it is responsible for a certain freshness in the thing itself. Anyhow St. Francis was, as it were, the founder of a new folk-lore; but he could distinguish his mermaids from his mermen and his witches from his wizards. In short, he had to make his own mythology; but he knew at a glance the goddesses from the gods. This fanciful instinct for the sexes is not the only example of an imaginative instinct of the kind. There is just the same quaint felicity in the fact that he singles out the sun with a slightly more courtly title besides that of brother; a phrase that one king might use of another, corresponding to “Monsieur notre frere.” It is like a faint half ironic shadow of the shining primacy that it had held in the pagan heavens. A bishop is said to have complained of a Nonconformist saying Paul instead of Saint Paul; and to have added, “He might at least have called him Mr. Paul.” So St. Francis is free of all obligation to cry out in praise or terror on the Lord God Apollo, but in his new nursery heavens, he salutes him as Mr. Sun. Those are the things in which he has a sort of inspired infancy, only to be paralleled in nursery tales. Something of the same hazy but healthy awe makes the story of Br’er Fox and Br’er Rabbit refer respectfully to Mr. Man.
This poem, full of the mirth of youth and the memories of childhood, runs through his whole life like a refrain, and scraps of it turn up continually in the ordinary habit of his talk. Perhaps the last appearance of its special language was in an incident that has always seemed to me intensely impressive, and is at any rate very illustrative of the great manner and gesture of which I speak. Impressions of that kind are a matter of imagination and in that sense of taste. It is idle to argue about them; for it is the whole point of them that they have passed beyond words; and even when they use words, seem to be completed by some ritual movement like a blessing or a blow. So, in a supreme example, there is something far past all exposition, something like the sweeping movement and mighty shadow of a hand, darkening even the darkness of Gethsemane; “Sleep on now, and take your rest… ” Yet there are people who have started to paraphrase and expand the story of the Passion.
St. Francis was a dying man. We might say he was an old man, at the time this typical incident occurred; but in fact he was only prematurely old; for he was not fifty when he died, worn out with his fighting and fasting life. But when he came down from the awful asceticism and more awful revelation of Alverno, he was a broken man. As will be apparent when these events are touched on in their turn, it was not only sickness and bodily decay that may well have darkened his life; he had been recently disappointed in his main mission to end the Crusades by the conversion of Islam; he had been still more disappointed by the signs of compromise and a more political or practical spirit in his own order; he had spent his last energies in protest.
At this point he was told that he was going blind. If the faintest hint has been given here of what St. Francis felt about the glory and pageantry of earth and sky, about the heraldic shape and colour and symbolism of birds and beasts and flowers, some notion may be formed of what it meant to him to go blind. Yet the remedy might well have seemed worse than the disease. The remedy, admittedly an uncertain remedy, was to cauterise the eye, and that without any anaesthetic. In other words it was to burn his living eyeballs with a red-hot iron. Many of the tortures of martyrdom, which he envied in martyrology and sought vainly in Syria, can have been no worse. When they took the brand from the furnace, he rose as with an urbane gesture and spoke as to an invisible presence: “Brother Fire, God made you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous with me.”
If there be any such thing as the art of life, it seems to me that such a moment was one of its masterpieces. Not too many poets has it been given to remember their own poetry at such a moment, still less to live one of their own poems. Even William Blake would have been disconcerted if, while he was re-reading the noble lines, “Tiger, tiger, burning bright,” a large live Bengal tiger had put his head in at the window of the cottage in Felpham, evidently with every intention of biting his head off. He might have wavered before politely saluting it, above all by calmly completing the recitation of the poem to the quadruped to whom it was dedicated. Shelley, who wished to be a cloud or a leaf carried before the wind, have been mildly surprised to find himself turning slowly head over heels in mid-air a thousand feet above the sea. Even Keats, knowing that his hold on life was a frail one, might have been disturbed to discover that the true, the blushful Hippocrene of which he had just partaken freely had indeed contained a drug, which really ensured that he should cease upon the midnight with no pain. For Francis there was no drug; and for Francis there was plenty of pain. But his first thought was one of his first fancies from the songs of his youth. He remembered the time when a flame was a flower, only the most glorious and gaily coloured of the flowers in the garden of God; and when that shining thing returned to him in the shape of an instrument of torture, he hailed it from afar like an old friend, calling it by the nickname which might most truly be called its Christian name.
That is only one incident out of a life of such incidents; and I have selected it partly because it shows what is meant here by that shadow of gesture there is in all his words, the dramatic gesture of the south; and partly because its special reference to courtesy covers the next fact to be noted. The popular instinct of St. Francis, and his perpetual preoccupation with the idea of brotherhood, will be entirely misunderstood if it is understood in the sense of what is often called camaraderie; the backslapping sort of brotherhood. Frequently from the enemies and too frequently from the friends of the democratic ideal, there has come a notion that this note is necessary to that ideal. It is assumed that equality means all men being equally uncivil, whereas it obviously ought to mean all men being equally civil. Such people have forgotten the very meaning and derivation of the word civility, if they do not see that to be uncivil is to be uncivic. But anyhow that was not the equality which Francis of Assisi encouraged; but an equality of the opposite kind; it was a camaraderie actually founded on courtesy.
Even in that fairy borderland of his mere fancies about flowers and animals and even inanimate things, he retained this permanent posture of a sort of deference. A friend of mine said that somebody was the sort of man who apologises to the cat. St. Francis really would have apologised to the cat. When he was about to preach in a wood full of the chatter of birds, he said, with a gentle gesture, “Little sisters, if you have now had your say, it is time that I also should be heard.” And all the birds were silent; as I for one can very easily believe. In deference to my special design of making matters intelligible to average modernity, I have treated separately the subject of the miraculous powers that St. Francis most certainly possessed.
But even apart from any miraculous powers, men of that magnetic sort, with that intense interest in animals, often have an extraordinary power over them. St. Francis’s power was always exercised with this elaborate politeness. Much of it was doubtless a sort of symbolic joke, a pious pantomime intended to convey the vital distinction in his divine mission, that he not only loved but reverenced God in all his creatures. In this sense he had the air not only of apologising to the cat or to the birds, but of apologising to a chair for sitting on it or to a table for sitting down at it. Any one who had followed him through life merely to laugh at him, as a sort of lovable lunatic, might easily have had an impression as of a lunatic who bowed to every post or took off his hat to every tree. This was all a part of his instinct for imaginative gesture. He taught the world a large part of its lesson by a sort of divine dumb alphabet. But if there was this ceremonial element even in lighter or lesser matters, its significance became far more serious in the serious work of his life, which was an appeal to humanity, or rather to human beings.
I have said that St. Francis deliberately did not see the wood for the trees. It is even more true that he deliberately did not see the mob for the men. What distinguishes this very genuine democrat from any mere demagogue is that he never either deceived or was deceived by the illusion of mass-suggestion. Whatever his taste in monsters, he never saw before him a many-headed beast. He only saw the image of God multiplied but never monotonous. To him a man was always a man and did not disappear in a dense crowd any more than in a desert. He honoured all men; that is, he not only loved but respected them all. What gave him his extraordinary personal power was this; that from the Pope to the beggar, from the sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those brown burning eyes without being certain that Francis Bernardone was really interested in him; in his own inner individual life from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was being valued and taken seriously, and not merely added to the spoils of some social policy or the names in some clerical document. Now for this particular moral and religious idea there is no external expression except courtesy. Exhortation does not express it, for it is not mere abstract enthusiasm; beneficence does not express it, for it is not mere pity. It can only be conveyed by a certain grand manner which may be called good manners. We may say if we like that St. Francis, in the bare and barren simplicity of his life, had clung to one rag of luxury; the manners of a court.
But whereas in a court there is one king and a hundred courtiers, in this story there was one courtier, moving among a hundred kings. For he treated the whole mob of men as a mob of kings. And this was really and truly the only attitude that will appeal to that part of man to which he wished to appeal. It cannot be done by giving gold or even bread; for it is a proverb that any reveller may fling largesse in mere scorn. It cannot even be done by giving time and attention; for any number of philanthropists and benevolent bureaucrats do such work with a scorn far more cold and horrible in their hearts. No plans or proposals or efficient rearrangements will give back to a broken man his self-respect and sense of speaking with an equal. One gesture will do it.
With that gesture Francis of Assisi moved among men; and it was soon found to have something in it of magic and to act, in a double sense, like a charm. But it must always be conceived as a completely natural gesture; for indeed it was almost a gesture of apology. He must be imagined as moving thus swiftly through the world with a sort of impetuous politeness; almost like the movement of a man who stumbles on one knee half in haste and half in obeisance. The eager face under the brown hood was that of a man always going somewhere, as if he followed as well as watched the flight of the birds. And this sense of motion is indeed the meaning of the whole revolution that he made; for the work that has now to be described was of the nature of an earthquake or a volcano, an explosion that drove outwards with dynamic energy the forces stored up by ten centuries in the monastic fortress or arsenal and scattered all its riches recklessly to the ends of the earth. In a better sense than the antithesis commonly conveys, it is true to say that what St. Benedict had stored St. Francis scattered; but in the world of spiritual things what had been stored into the barns like grain was scattered over the world as seed. The servants of God who had been a besieged garrison became a marching army; the ways of the world were filled as with thunder with the trampling of their feet and far ahead of that ever swelling host went a man singing; as simply he had sung that morning in the winter woods, where he walked alone.
Chapter VII
THE THREE ORDERS
There is undoubtedly a sense in which two is company and three is none; there is also another sense in which three is company and four is none as is proved by the procession of historic and fictitious figures moving three deep the famous trios like the Three Musketeers or the Three Soldiers of Kipling. But there is yet another and a different sense in which four is company and three is none; if we use the word company in the vaguer sense of a crowd or a mass. With the fourth man enters the shadow of a mob; the group is no longer one of three individuals only conceived individually. That shadow of the fourth man fell across the little hermitage of the Portiuncula when a man named Egidio apparently a poor workman was invited by St. Francis to enter. He mingled without difficulty with the merchant and the canon who had already become the companions of Francis; but with his coming an invisible line was crossed; for it must have been felt by this time that the growth of that small group had become potentially infinite, or at least that its outline had become permanently indefinite. It may have been in the time of that transition that Francis had another of his dreams full of voices; but now the voices were a clamour of the tongues of all nations, Frenchmen and Italians and English and Spanish and Germans, telling of the glory of God each in his own tongue; a new Pentecost and a happier Babel.
Before describing the first steps he took to regularise the growing group, it is well to have a rough grasp of what he conceived that group to be. He did not call his followers monks; and it is not clear, at this time at least, that he even thought of them as monks. He called them by a name which is generally rendered in English as the Friars Minor; but we shall be much closer to the atmosphere of his own mind if we render it almost literally as The Little Brothers. Presumably he was already resolved, indeed, that they should take the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience which had always been the mark of a monk. But it would seem that he was not so much afraid of the idea of a monk as of the idea of an abbot. He was afraid that the great spiritual magistracies which had given even to their holiest possessors at least a sort of impersonal and corporate pride, would import an element of pomposity that would spoil his extremely and almost extravagantly simple version of the life of humility. But the supreme difference between his discipline and the discipline of the old monastic system was concerned, of course, with the idea that the monks were to become migratory and almost nomadic instead of stationary. They were to mingle with the world; and to this the more old-fashioned monk would naturally reply by asking how they were to mingle with the world without becoming entangled with the world. It was a much more real question than a loose religiosity is likely to realise; but St. Francis had his answer to it, of his own individual sort; and the interest of the problem is in that highly individual answer.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, “if we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.” That sentence is the clue to the whole policy that he pursued. It rested upon a real piece of logic; and about that he was never anything but logical. He was ready to own himself wrong about anything else; but he was quite certain he was right about this particular rule. He was only once seen angry; and that was when there was talk of an exception to the rule.
His argument was this: that the dedicated man might go anywhere among any kind of men, even the worst kind of men, so long as there was nothing by which they could hold him. If he had any ties or needs like ordinary men, he would become like ordinary men. St. Francis was the last man in the world to think any the worse of ordinary men for being ordinary. They had more affection and admiration from him than they are ever likely to have again. But for his own particular purpose of stirring up the world to a new spiritual enthusiasm, he saw with a logical clarity that was quite reverse of fanatical or sentimental, that friars must not become like ordinary men; that the salt must not lose its savour even to turn into human nature’s daily food. And the difference between a friar and an ordinary man was really that a friar was freer than an ordinary man. It was necessary that he should be free from the cloister; but it was even more important that he should be free from the world. It is perfectly sound common sense to say that there is a sense in which the ordinary man cannot be free from the world; or rather ought not to be free from the world. The feudal world in particular was one labyrinthine system of dependence; but it was not only the feudal world that went to make up the mediaeval world nor the mediaeval world that went to make up the whole world; and the whole world is full of this fact. Family life as much as feudal life is in its nature a system of dependence. Modern trade unions as much as mediaeval guilds are interdependent among themselves even in order to be independent of others. In mediaeval as in modern life, even where these limitations do exist for the sake of liberty, they have in them a considerable element of luck. They are partly the result of circumstances; sometimes the almost unavoidable result of circumstances. So the twelfth century had been the age of vows; and there was something of relative freedom in that feudal gesture of the vow; for no man asks vows from slaves any more than from spades. Still, in practice, a man rode to war in support of the ancient house of the Column or behind the Great Dog of the Stairway largely because had been born in a certain city or countryside. But no man need obey little Francis in the old brown coat unless he chose. Even in his relations with his chosen leader he was in one sense relatively free, compared with the world around him. He was obedient but not dependent. And he was as free as the wind, he was almost wildly free, in his relation to that world around him. The world around him was, as has been noted, a network of feudal and family and other forms of dependence. The whole idea of St. Francis was that the Little Brothers should be like little fishes who could go freely in and out of that net. They could do so precisely because they were small fishes and in that sense even slippery fishes. There was nothing that the world could hold them by; for the world catches us mostly by the fringes of our garments, the futile externals of our lives. One of the Franciscans says later, “A monk should own nothing but his harp”; meaning, I suppose, that he should value nothing but his song, the song with which it was his business as a minstrel to serenade every castle and cottage, the song of the joy of the Creator in his creation and the beauty of the brotherhood of men. In imagining the life of this sort of visionary vagabond, we May already get a glimpse also of the practical side of that asceticism which puzzles those who think themselves practical. A man had to be thin to pass always through the bars and out of the cage; he had to travel light in order to ride so fast and so far. It was the whole calculation, so to speak, of that innocent cunning, that the world was to be outflanked and outwitted by him, and be embarrassed about what to do with him. You could not threaten to starve a man who was ever striving to fast. You could not ruin him and reduce him to beggary, for he was already a beggar. There was a very lukewarm satisfaction even in beating him with a stick, when he only indulged in little leaps and cries of joy because indignity was his only dignity. You could not put his head in a halter without the risk of putting it in a halo.
But one distinction between the old Monks and the new friars counted especially in the matter of practicality and especially of promptitude. The old fraternities with their fixed habitations and enclosed existence had the limitations of ordinary householders. However simply they lived there must be a certain number of cells or a certain number of beds or at least a certain cubic space for a certain number of brothers; their numbers therefore depended on their land and building material. But since a man could become a Franciscan by merely promising to take his chance of eating berries in a lane or begging a crust from a kitchen, of sleeping under a hedge or sitting patiently on a doorstep, there was no economic reason why there should not be any number of such eccentric enthusiasts within any short period of time. It must also be remembered that the whole of this rapid development was full of a certain kind of democratic optimism that really was part of the personal character of St. Francis. His very asceticism was in one sense the height of optimism. He demanded a great deal of human nature not because he despised it but rather because he trusted it. He was expecting a very great deal from the extraordinary men who followed him; but he was also expecting a good deal from the ordinary men to whom he sent them. He asked the laity for food as confidently as he asked the fraternity for fasting. But he counted on the hospitality of humanity because he really did regard every house as the house of a friend. He really did love and honour ordinary men and ordinary things; indeed we may say that he only sent out the extraordinary men to encourage men to be ordinary.
This paradox may be more exactly stated or explained when we come to deal with the very interesting matter of the Third Order, which was designed to assist ordinary men to be ordinary with an extraordinary exultation. The point at issue at present is the audacity and simplicity of the Franciscan plan for quartering its spiritual soldiery upon the population; not by force but by persuasion, and even by the persuasion of impotence. It was an act of confidence and therefore a compliment. It was completely successful. It was an example of something that clung about St. Francis always; a kind of tact that looked like luck because it was as simple and direct as a thunderbolt. There are many examples in his private relations of this sort of tactless tact; this surprise effected by striking at the heart of the matter. It is said that a young friar was suffering from a sort of sulks between morbidity and humility, common enough in youth and hero-worship, in which he had got it into his head that his hero hated or despised him. We can imagine how tactfully social diplomatists would steer clear of scenes and excitements, how cautiously psychologists would watch and handle such delicate cases. Francis suddenly walked up to the young man, who was of course secretive and silent as the grave, and said, “Be not troubled in your thoughts for you are dear to me, and even among the number of those who are most dear. You know that you are worthy of my friendship and society; therefore come to me, in confidence, whensoever you will, and from friendship learn faith.” Exactly as he spoke to that morbid boy he spoke to all mankind. He always went to the point; he always seemed at once more right and more simple than the person he was speaking to. He seemed at once to be laying open his guard and yet lunging at the heart. Something in this attitude disarmed the world as it has never been disarmed again. He was better than other men; he was a benefactor of other men; and yet he was not hated. The world came into church by a newer and nearer door; and by friendship it learnt faith.
It was while the little knot of people at the Portiuncula was still small enough to gather in a small room that St. Francis resolved on his first important and even sensational stroke. It is said that there were only twelve Franciscans in the whole world when he decided to march, as it were, on Rome and found a Franciscan order. It would seem that this appeal to remote headquarters was not generally regarded as necessary; possibly something could have been done in a secondary way under the Bishop of Assisi and the local clergy. It would seem even more probable that people thought it somewhat unnecessary to trouble the supreme tribunal of Christendom about what a dozen chance men chose to call themselves. But Francis was obstinate and as it were blind on this point; and his brilliant blindness is exceedingly characteristic of him. A man satisfied with small things, or even in love with small things, he yet never felt quite as we do about the disproportion between small things and large. He never saw things to scale in our sense, but with a dizzy disproportion which makes the mind reel. Sometimes it seems merely out of drawing like a gaily coloured medieval map; and then again it seems to have escaped from everything like a short cut in the fourth dimension. He is said to have made a journey to interview the Emperor, throned among his armies under the eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, to intercede for the lives of certain little birds. He was quite capable of facing fifty emperors to intercede for one bird. He started out with two companions to convert the Mahometan world. He started out with eleven companions to ask the Pope to make a new monastic world.
Innocent III, the great Pope, according to Bonaventura, was walking on the terrace of St. John Lateran, doubtless revolving the great political questions which troubled his reign, when there appeared abruptly before him a person in peasant costume whom he took to be some sort of shepherd. He appears to have got rid of the shepherd with all convenient speed; possibly he formed the opinion that the shepherd was mad. Anyhow he thought no more about it until, says the great Franciscan biographer, he dreamed that night a strange dream. He fancied that he saw the whole huge ancient temple of St. John Lateran, on whose high terraces he had walked so securely, leaning horribly and crooked against the sky as if all its domes and turrets were stooping before an earthquake Then he looked again and saw that a human figure was holding it up like a living caryatid; and the figure was that of the ragged shepherd or peasant from whom he had turned away on the terrace. Whether this be a fact or a figure it is a very true figure of the abrupt simplicity with which Francis won the attention and the favour of Rome. His first friend seems to have been the Cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo who pleaded for the Franciscan idea before a conclave of Cardinals summoned for the purpose. It is interesting to note that the doubts thrown upon it seem to have been chiefly doubts about whether the rule was not too hard for humanity, for the Catholic Church is always on the watch against excessive asceticism and its evils. Probably they meant, especially when they said it was unduly hard, that it was unduly dangerous. For a certain element that can only be called danger is what marks the innovation as compared with older institutions of the kind. In one sense indeed the friar was almost the opposite of the monk. The value of the old monasticism had been that there was not only an ethical but an economic repose. Out of that repose had come the works for which the world will never be sufficiently grateful, the preservation of the classics, the beginning of the Gothic, the schemes of science and philosophies, the illuminated manuscripts and the coloured glass. The whole point of a monk was that his economic affairs were settled for good; he knew where he would get his supper, though it was a very plain supper. But the whole point of a friar was that he did not know where he would get his supper. There was always a possibility that he might get no supper. There was an element of what would be called romance, as of the gipsy or adventurer. But there was also an element of potential tragedy, as of the tramp or the casual labourer. So the Cardinals of the thirteenth century were filled with compassion, seeing a few men entering of their own free will that estate to which the poor of the twentieth century are daily driven by cold coercion and moved on by the police.
Cardinal San Paolo seems to have argued more or less in this manner: it may be a hard life, but after all it is the life apparently described as ideal in the Gospel; make what compromises you think wise or humane about that ideal; but do not commit yourselves to saying that men shall not fulfil that ideal if they can. We shall see the importance of this argument when we come to the whole of that higher aspect of the life of St. Francis which may be called the imitation of Christ. The upshot of the discussion was that the Pope gave his verbal approval to the project and promised a more definite endorsement, if the movement should grow to more considerable proportions. It is probable that Innocent, who was himself a man of no ordinary mentality, had very little doubt that it would do so; anyhow he was not left long in doubt before it did do so. The next passage in the history of the order is simply the story of more and more people flocking to its standard; and as has already been remarked, once it had begun to grow, it could in its nature grow much more quickly than any ordinary society requiring ordinary funds and public buildings. Even the return of the twelve pioneers from their papal audience seems to have been a sort of triumphal procession. In one place in particular, it is said, the whole population of a town, men, women and children, turned out, leaving their work and wealth and homes exactly as they stood and begging to be taken into the army of God on the spot. According to the story, it was on this occasion that St. Francis first foreshadowed his idea of the Third Order which enabled men to share in the movement without leaving the homes and habits of normal humanity. For the moment it is most important to regard this story as one example of the riot of conversion with which he was already filling all the roads of Italy. It was a world of wandering; friars perpetually coming and going in all the highways and byways, seeking to ensure that any man who met one of them by chance should have a spiritual adventure. The first Order of St. Francis had entered history.
This rough outline can only be rounded off here with some description of the Second and Third Orders, though they were founded later and at separate times. The former was an order for women and owed its existence, of course, to the beautiful friendship of St. Francis and St. Clare. There is no story about which even the most sympathetic critics of another creed have been more bewildered and misleading. For there is no story that more clearly turns on that simple test which I have taken as crucial throughout this criticism. I mean that what is the matter with these critics is that they will not believe that a heavenly love can be as real as an earthly love. The moment it is treated as real, like an earthly love, their whole riddle is easily resolved. A girl of seventeen, named Clare and belonging to one of the noble families of Assisi, was filled with an enthusiasm for the conventual life; and Francis helped her to escape from her home and to take up the conventual life. If we like to put it so, he helped her to elope into the cloister, defying her parents as he had defied his father. Indeed the scene had many of the elements of a regular romantic elopement; for she escaped through a hole in the wall, fled through a wood and was received at midnight by the light of torches. Even Mrs. Oliphant, in her fine and delicate study of St. Francis, calls it “an incident which we can hardly record with satisfaction.”
Now about that incident I will here only say this. If it had really been a romantic elopement and the girl had become a bride instead of a nun, practically the whole modern world would have made her a heroine. If the action of the Friar towards Clare had been the action of the Friar towards Juliet, everybody would be sympathising with her exactly as they sympathise with Juliet. It is not conclusive to say that Clare was only seventeen. Juliet was only fourteen. Girls married and boys fought in battles at such early ages in mediaeval times; and a girl of seventeen in the thirteenth century was certainly old enough to know her own mind. There cannot be the shadow of a doubt, for any sane person considering subsequent events, that St. Clare did know her own mind. But the point for the moment is that modern romanticism entirely encourages such defiance of parents when it is done in the name of romantic love. For it knows that romantic love is a reality, but it does not know that divine love is a reality. There may have been something to be said for the parents of Clare; there may have been something to be said for Peter Bernardone. So there may have been a great deal to be said for the Montagues or the Capulets; but the modern world does not want it said; and does not say it. The fact is that as soon as we assume for a moment as a hypothesis, what St. Francis and St. Clare assumed all the time as an absolute, that there is a direct divine relation more glorious than any romance, the story of St. Clare’s elopement is simply a romance with a happy ending; and St. Francis is the St. George or knight-errant who gave it a happy ending. And seeing that some millions of men and women have lived and died treating this relation as a reality, a man is not much of a philosopher if he cannot even treat it as a hypothesis.
For the rest, we may at least assume that no friend of what is called the emancipation of women will regret the revolt of St. Clare. She did most truly, in the modern jargon, live her own life, the life that she herself wanted to lead, as distinct from the life into which parental commands and conventional arrangements would have forced her. She became the foundress of a great feminine movement which still profoundly affects the world; and her place is with the powerful women of history. It is not clear that she would have been so great or so useful if she had made a runaway match, or even stopped at home and made a mariage de convenance. So much any sensible man may well say considering the matter merely from the outside; and I have no intention of attempting to consider it from the inside. If a man may well doubt whether he is worthy to write a word about St. Francis, he will certainly want words better than his own to speak of the friendship of St. Francis and St. Clare. I have often remarked that the mysteries of this story are best expressed symbolically in certain silent attitudes and actions. And I know no better symbol than that found by the felicity of popular legend, which says that one night the people of Assisi thought the trees and the holy house were on fire, and rushed up to extinguish the conflagration. But they found all quiet within, where St. Francis broke bread with St. Clare at one of their rare meetings, and talked of the love of God. It would be hard to find a more imaginative image, for some sort of utterly pure and disembodied passion, than that red halo round the unconscious figures on the hill; a flame feeding on nothing and setting the very air on fire.
But if the Second Order was the memorial of such an unearthly love, the Third Order was as solid a memorial of a very solid sympathy with earthly loves and earthly lives. The whole of this feature in Catholic life, the lay orders in touch with clerical orders, is very little understood in Protestant countries and very little allowed for in Protestant history. The vision which has been so faintly suggested in these pages has never been confined to monks or even to friars. It has been an inspiration to innumerable crowds of ordinary married men and women; living lives like our own, only entirely different. That morning glory which St. Francis spread over the earth and sky has lingered as a secret sunshine under a multitude of roofs and in a multitude of rooms. In societies like ours nothing is known of such a Franciscan following. Nothing is known of such obscure followers; and if possible less is known of the well-known followers. If we imagine passing us in the street a pageant of the Third Order of St. Francis, the famous figures would surprise us more than the strange ones. For us it would be like the unmasking of some mighty secret society. There rides St. Louis, the great king, lord of the higher justice whose scales hang crooked in favour of the poor. There is Dante crowned with laurel, the poet who in his life of passions sang the praises of the Lady Poverty, whose grey garment is lined with purple and all glorious within. All sorts of great names from the most recent and rationalistic centuries would stand revealed; the great Galvani, for instance, the father of all electricity, the magician who has made so many modern systems of stars and sounds. So various a following would alone be enough to prove that St. Francis had no lack of sympathy with normal men, if the whole of his own life did not prove it.
But in fact his life did prove it, and that possibly in a more subtle sense. There is, I fancy, some truth in the hint of one of his modern biographers, that even his natural passions were singularly normal and even noble, in the sense of turning towards things not unlawful in themselves but only unlawful for him. Nobody ever lived of whom we could less fitly use the word “regret” than Francis of Assisi. Though there was much that was romantic, there was nothing in the least sentimental about his mood. It was not melancholy enough for that. He was of far too swift and rushing a temper to be troubled with doubts and reconsiderations about the race he ran; though he had any amount of self-reproach about not running faster. But it is true, one suspects, that when he wrestled with the devil, as every man must to be worth calling a man, the whispers referred mostly to those healthy instincts that he would have approved for others; they bore no resemblance to that ghastly painted paganism which sent its demoniac courtesans to plague St. Anthony in the desert. If St. Francis had only pleased himself, it would have been with simpler pleasures. He was moved to love rather than lust, and by nothing wilder than wedding bells. It is suggested in that strange story of how he defied the devil by making images in the snow, and crying out that these sufficed him for a wife and family. It is suggested in the saying he used when disclaiming any security from sin, “I may yet have children”; almost as if it was of the children rather than the woman that he dreamed. And this, if it be true, gives a final touch to the truth about his character. There was so much about him of the spirit of the morning, so much that was curiously young and clean, that even what was bad in him was good. As it was said of others that the light in their body was darkness, so it may be said of this luminous spirit that the very shadows in his soul were of light. Evil itself could not come to him save in the form of a forbidden good; and he could only be tempted by a sacrament.
Chapter VIII
No man who has been given the freedom of the Faith is likely to fall into those hole-and corner extravagances in which later degenerate Franciscans, or rather Fraticelli, sought to concentrate entirely on St. Francis as a second Christ, the creator of a new gospel. In fact any such notion makes nonsense of every motive in the man’s life; for no man would reverently magnify what he was meant to rival, or only profess to follow what he existed to supplant. On the contrary, as will appear later, this little study would rather specially insist that it was really the papal sagacity that saved the great Franciscan movement for the whole world and the universal Church, and prevented it from petering out as that sort of stale and second rate sect that is called a new religion. Everything that is written here must be understood not only as distinct from but diametrically opposed to the idolatry of the Fraticelli. The difference between Christ and St. Francis was the difference between the Creator and the creature; and certainly no creature was ever so conscious of that colossal contrast as St. Francis himself. But subject to this understanding, it is perfectly true and it is vitally important that Christ was the pattern on which St. Francis sought to fashion himself; and that at many points their human and historical lives were even curiously coincident; and above all, that compared to most of us at least St. Francis is a most sublime approximation to his Master, and, even in being an intermediary and a reflection, is a splendid and yet a merciful Mirror of Christ. And this truth suggests another, which I think has hardly been noticed; but which happens to be a highly forcible argument for the authority of Christ being continuous in the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Newman wrote in his liveliest controversial work a sentence that might be a model of what we mean by saying that his creed tends to lucidity and logical courage. In speaking of the ease with which truth may be made to look like its own shadow or sham, he said, “And if Antichrist is like Christ, Christ I suppose is like Antichrist.” Mere religious sentiment might well be shocked at the end of the sentence; but nobody could object to it except the logician who said that Ceasar and Pompey were very much alike, especially Pompey. It may give a much milder shock if I say here, what most of us have forgotten, that if St. Francis was like Christ, Christ was to that extent like St. Francis. And my present point is that it is really very enlightening to realise that Christ was like St. Francis. What I mean is this; that if men find certain riddles and hard sayings in the story of Galilee, and if they find the answers to those riddles in the story of Assisi, it really does show that a secret has been handed down in one religious tradition and no other. It shows that the casket that was locked in Palestine can be unlocked in Umbria; for the Church is the keeper of the keys.
Now in truth while it has always seemed natural to explain St. Francis in the light of Christ, it has not occurred to many people to explain Christ in the light of St. Francis. Perhaps the word “light” is not here the proper metaphor; but the same truth is admitted in the accepted metaphor of the mirror. St. Francis is the mirror of Christ rather as the moon is the mirror of the sun. The moon is much smaller than the sun, but it is also much nearer to us; and being less vivid it is more visible. Exactly in the same sense St. Francis is nearer to us, and being a mere man like ourselves is in that sense more imaginable. Being necessarily less of a mystery, he does not, for us, so much open his mouth in mysteries. Yet as a matter of fact, many minor things that seem mysteries in the mouth of Christ would seem merely characteristic paradoxes in the mouth of St. Francis. It seems natural to reread the more remote incidents with the help of the more recent ones. It is a truism to say that Christ lived before Christianity; and it follows that as a historical figure. He is a figure in heathen history. I mean that the medium in which He moved was not the medium of Christendom but of the old pagan empire; and from that alone, not to mention the distance of time, it follows that His circumstances are more alien to us than those of an Italian monk such as we might meet even to-day. I suppose the most authoritative commentary can hardly be certain of the current or conventional weight of all His words or phrases; of which of them would then have seemed a common allusion and which a strange fancy. This archaic setting has left many of the sayings standing like hieroglyphics and subject to many and peculiar individual interpretations. Yet it is true of almost any of them that if we simply translate them into the Umbrian dialect of the first Franciscans, they would seem like any other part of the Franciscans story; doubtless in one sense fantastic, but quite familiar. All sorts of critical controversies have revolved round the passage which bids men consider the lilies of the field and copy them in taking no thought for the morrow. The sceptic has alternated between telling us to be true Christians and do it, and explaining that it is impossible to do. When he is a communist as well as an atheist, he is generally doubtful whether to blame us for preaching what is impracticable or for not instantly putting it into practice. I am not going to discuss here the point of ethics and economics; I merely remark that even those who are puzzled at the saying of Christ would hardly pause in accepting it as a saying of St. Francis. Nobody would be surprised to find that he had said, “I beseech you, little brothers, that you be as wise as Brother Daisy and Brother Dandelion; for never do they lie awake thinking of to-morrow, yet they have gold crowns like kings and emperors or like Charlemagne in all his glory.” Even more bitterness and bewilderment has arisen about the command to turn the other cheek and to give the coat to the robber who has taken the cloak. It is widely held to imply the wickedness of war among nations about which, in itself, not a word seems to have been said. Taken thus literally and universally, it much more clearly implies the wickedness of all law and government. Yet there are many prosperous peacemakers who are much more shocked at the idea of using the brute force of soldiers against a powerful foreigner than they are at using the brute force of policemen against a poor fellow-citizen. Here again I am content to point out that the paradox becomes perfectly human and probable if addressed by Francis to Franciscans. Nobody would be surprised to read that Brother Juniper did then run after the thief that had stolen his hood, beseeching him to take his gown also; for so St. Francis had commanded him. Nobody would be surprised if St. Francis told a young noble, about to be admitted to his company, that so far from pursuing a brigand to recover his shoes, he ought to pursue him to make him a present of his stockings. We may like or not the atmosphere these things imply; but we know what atmosphere they do imply. We recognise a certain note as natural and clear as the note of a bird; the note of St. Francis. There is in it something of gentle mockery of the very idea of possessions; something of a hope of disarming the enemy by generosity; something of a humorous sense of bewildering the worldly with the unexpected; something of the joy of carrying an enthusiastic conviction to a logical extreme. But anyhow we have no difficulty in recognising it if we have read any of the literature of the Little Brothers and the movement that began in Assisi. It seems reasonable to infer that if it was this spirit that made such strange things possible in Umbria, it was the same spirit that made them possible in Palestine. If we hear the same unmistakable note and sense the same indescribable savour in two things at such a distance from each other, it seems natural to suppose that the case that is more remote from our experience was like the case that is closer to our experience. As the thing is explicable on the assumption that Francis was speaking to Franciscans, it is not an irrational explanation to suggest that Christ also was speaking to some dedicated band that had much the same function as Franciscans. In other words, it seems only natural to hold, as the Catholic Church has held, that these counsels of perfection were part of a particular vocation to astonish and awaken the world. But in any case it is important to note that when we do find these particular features, with their seemingly fantastic fitness, reappearing after more than a thousand years, we find them produced by the same religious system which claims continuity and authority from the scenes in which they first appeared. Any number of philosophies will repeat the platitudes of Christianity. But it is the ancient Church that can again startle the world with the paradoxes of Christianity. Ubi Petrus ibi Franciscus.
But if we understand that it was truly under the inspiration of his divine Master that St. Francis did these merely quaint or eccentric acts of charity, we must understand that it was under the same inspiration that he did acts of self-denial and austerity. It is clear that these more or less playful parables of the love of men were conceived after a close study of the Sermon on the Mount. But it is evident that he made an even closer study of the silent sermon on that other mountain; the mountain that was called Golgotha. Here again he was speaking the strict historical truth, when he said that in fasting or suffering humiliation he was but trying to do something of what Christ did; and here again it seems probable that as the same truth appears at the two ends of a chain of tradition, the tradition has preserved the truth. But the import of this fact at the moment affects the next phase in the personal history of the man himself.
For as it becomes clearer that his great communal scheme is an accomplished fact and past the peril of an early collapse, as it becomes evident that there already is such a thing as an Order of the Friars Minor, this more individual and intense ambition of St. Francis emerges more and more. So soon as he certainly has followers, he does not compare himself with his followers, towards whom he might appear as a master; he compares himself more and more with his Master, towards whom he appears only as a servant. This, it may be said in passing, is one of the moral and even practical conveniences of the ascetical privilege. Every other sort of superiority may be superciliousness. But the saint is never supercilious, for he is always by hypothesis in the presence of a superior. The objection to an aristocracy is that it is a priesthood without a god. But in any case the service to which St. Francis had committed himself was one which, about this time, he conceived more and more in terms of sacrifice and crucifixion. He was full of the sentiment that he had not suffered enough to be worthy even to be a distant follower of his suffering God. And this passage in his history may really be roughly summarized as the Search for Martyrdom.
This was the ultimate idea in the remarkable business of his expedition among the Saracens in Syria. There were indeed other elements in his conception, which are worthy of more intelligent understanding than they have often received. His idea, of course, was to bring the Crusades in a double sense to their end; that is, to reach their conclusion and to achieve their purpose. Only he wished to do it by conversion and not by conquest; that is, by intellectual and not material means. The modern mind is hard to please; and it generally calls the way of Godfrey ferocious and the way of Francis fanatical. That is, it calls any moral method unpractical, when it has just called any practical method immoral. But the idea of St. Francis was far from being a fanatical or necessarily even an unpractical idea; though perhaps he saw the problem as rather too simple, lacking the learning of his great inheritor, Raymond Lully, who understood more but has been quite as little understood. The way he approached the matter was indeed highly personal and peculiar; but that was true of almost everything he did. It was in one way a simple idea, as most of his ideas were simple ideas. But it was not a silly idea; there was a great deal to be said for it and it might have succeeded. It was, of course, simply the idea that it is better to create Christians than to destroy Moslems. If Islam had been converted, the world would have been immeasurably more united and happy; for one thing, three quarters of the wars of modern history would never have taken place. It was not absurd to suppose that this might be effected, without military force, by missionaries who were also martyrs. The Church had conquered Europe in that way and may yet conquer Asia or Africa in that way. But when all this is allowed for, there is still another sense in which St. Francis was not thinking of Martyrdom as a means to an end, but almost as an end in itself; in the sense that to him the supreme end was to come closer to the example of Christ. Through all his plunging and, restless days ran the refrain: I have not suffered enough; I have not sacrificed enough; I am not yet worthy even of the shadow of the crown of thorns. He wandered about the valleys of the world looking for the hill that has the outline of a skull.
A little while before his final departure for the East a vast and triumphant assembly of the whole order had been held near the Portiuncula; and called the Assembly of the Straw Huts, from the manner in which that mighty army encamped in the field. Tradition says that it was on this occasion that St. Francis met St. Dominic for the first and last time. It also says, what is probable enough, that the practical spirit of the Spaniard was almost appalled at the devout irresponsibility of the Italian, who had assembled such a crowd without organising a commissariat. Dominic the Spaniard was, like nearly every Spaniard, a man with the mind of a soldier. His charity took the practical form of provision and preparation. But, apart from the disputes about faith which such incidents open, he probably did not understand in this case the power of mere popularity produced by mere personality. In all his leaps in the dark, Francis had an extraordinary faculty of falling on his feet. The whole countryside came down like a landslide to provide food and drink for this sort of pious picnic. Peasants brought waggons of wine and game; great nobles walked about doing the work of footmen. It was a very real victory for the Franciscan spirit of a reckless faith not only in God but in man. Of course there is much doubt and dispute about the whole story and the whole relation of Francis and Dominic; and the story of the Assembly of the Straw Huts is told from the Franciscan side. But the alleged meeting is worth mentioning, precisely because it was immediately before St. Francis set forth on his bloodless crusade that he is said to have met St. Dominic, who has been so much criticised for lending himself to a more bloody one. There is no space in this little book to explain how St. Francis, as much as St. Dominic, would ultimately have defended the defence of Christian unity by arms. Indeed it would need a large book instead of a little book to develop that point alone from its first principles. For the modern mind is merely a blank about the philosophy of toleration; and the average agnostic of recent times has really had no notion of what he meant by religious liberty and equality. He took his own ethics as self-evident and enforced them; such as decency or the error of the Adamite heresy. Then he was horribly shocked if he heard of anybody else, Moslem or Christian, taking his ethics as self-evident and enforcing them; such as reverence or the error of the Athiest heresy. And then he wound up by taking all this lop-sided illogical deadlock, of the unconscious meeting the unfamiliar, and called it the liberality of his own mind. Medieval men thought that if a social system was founded on a certain idea it must fight for that idea, whether it was as simple as Islam or as carefully balanced as Catholicism. Modern men really think the same thing, as is clear when communists attack their ideas of property. Only they do not think it so clearly, because they have not really thought out their idea of property. But while it is probable that St. Francis would have reluctantly agreed with St. Dominic that war for the truth was right in the last resort, it is certain that St. Dominic did enthusiastically agree with St. Francis that it was far better to prevail by persuasion and enlightenment if it were possible. St. Dominic devoted himself much more to persuading than to persecuting; but there was a difference in the methods simply because there was a difference in the men. About everything St. Francis did there was something that was in a good sense childish, and even in a good sense wilful. He threw himself into things abruptly, as if they had just occurred to him. He made a dash for his Mediterranean enterprise with something of the air of a schoolboy running away to sea.
In the first act of that attempt he characteristically distinguished himself by becoming the Patron Saint of Stowaways. He never thought of waiting for introductions or bargains or any of the considerable backing that he already had from rich and responsible people. He simply saw a boat and threw himself into it, as he threw himself into everything else. It has all that air of running a race which makes his whole life read like an escapade or even literally an escape. He lay like lumber among the cargo, with one companion whom he had swept with him in his rush; but the voyage was apparently unfortunate and erratic and ended in an enforced return to Italy. Apparently it was after this first false start that the great reunion took place at the Portiuncula, and between this and the final Syrian journey there was also an attempt to meet the Moslem menace by preaching to the Moors in Spain. In Spain indeed several of the first Franciscans had already succeeded gloriously in being martyred. But the great Francis still went about stretching out his arms for such torments and desiring that agony in vain. No one would have said more readily than he that he was probably less like Christ than those others who had already found their Calvary; but the thing remained with him like a secret; the strangest of the sorrows of man.
His later voyage was more successful, so far as arriving at the scene of operations was concerned. He arrived at the headquarters of the Crusade which was in front of the besieged city of Damietta, and went on in his rapid and solitary fashion to seek the headquarters of the Saracens. He succeeded in obtaining an interview with the Sultan; and it was at that interview that he evidently offered, and as some say proceeded, to fling himself into the fire as a divine ordeal, defying the Moslem religious teachers to do the same. It is quite certain that he would have done so at a moment’s notice. Indeed throwing himself into the fire was hardly more desperate, in any case, than throwing himself among the weapons and tools of torture of a horde of fanatical Mahometans and asking them to renounce Mahomet. It is said further that the Mahometan muftis showed some coldness towards the proposed competition, and that one of them quietly withdrew while it was under discussion; which would also appear credible. But for whatever reason Francis evidently returned as freely as he came. There may be something in the story of the individual impression produced on the Sultan, which the narrator represents as a sort of secret conversion. There may be something in the suggestion that the holy man was unconsciously protected among half-barbarous Orientals by the halo of sanctity that is supposed in such places to surround an idiot. There is probably as much or more in the more generous explanation of that graceful though capricious courtesy and compassion which mingled with wilder things in the stately Soldans of the type and tradition of Saladin. Finally, there is perhaps something in the suggestion that the tale of St. Francis might be told as a sort of ironic tragedy and comedy called The Man Who Could Not Get Killed. Men liked him too much for himself to let him die for his faith; and the man was received instead of the message. But all these are only converging guesses at a great effort that is hard to judge, because it broke off short like the beginnings of a great bridge that might have united East and West, and remains one of the great might-have-beens of history.
Meanwhile the great movement in Italy was making giant strides. Backed now by papal authority as well as popular enthusiasm, and creating a kind of comradeship among all classes, it had started a riot of reconstruction on all sides of religious and social life; and especially began to express itself in that enthusiasm for building which is the mark of all the resurrections of Western Europe. There had notably been established at Bologna a magnificent mission house of the Friars Minor; and a vast body of them and their sympathisers surrounded it with a chorus of acclamation. Their unanimity had a strange interruption. One man alone in that crowd was seen to turn and suddenly denounce the building as if it had been a Babylonian temple; demanding indignantly since when the Lady Poverty had thus been insulted with the luxury of palaces. It was Francis, a wild figure, returned from his Eastern Crusade; and it was the first and last time that he spoke in wrath to his children.
A word must be said later about this serious division of sentiment and policy, about which many Franciscans, and to some extent Francis himself, parted company with the more moderate policy which ultimately prevailed. At this point we need only note it as another shadow fallen upon his spirit after his disappointment in the desert; and as in some sense the prelude to the next phase of his career, which is the most isolated and the most mysterious. It is true that everything about this episode seems to be covered with some cloud of dispute, even including its date; some writers putting it much earlier in the narrative than this. But whether or no it was chronologically it was certainly logically the culmination of the story, and may best be indicated here. I say indicated for it must be a matter of little more than indication; the thing being a mystery both in the higher moral and the more trivial historical sense. Anyhow the conditions of the affair seem to have been these. Francis and a young companion, in the course of their common wandering, came past a great castle all lighted up with the festivities attending a son of the house receiving the honour of knighthood. This aristocratic mansion, which took its name from Monte Feltro, they entered in their beautiful and casual fashion and began to give their own sort of good news. There were some at least who listened to the saint “as if he had been an angel of God”; among them a gentleman named Orlando of Chiusi, who had great lands in Tuscany and who proceeded to do St. Francis a singular and somewhat picturesque act of courtesy. He gave him a mountain; a thing somewhat unique among the gifts of the world. Presumably the Franciscan rule which forbade a man to accept money had made no detailed provision about accepting mountains. Nor indeed did St. Francis accept it save as he accepted everything, as a temporary convenience rather than a personal possession; but he turned it into a sort of refuge for the eremitical rather than the monastic life; he retired there when he wished for a life of prayer and fasting which he did not ask even his closest friends to follow. This was Alverno of the Apennines, and upon its peak there rests for ever a dark cloud that has a rim or halo of glory.
What it was exactly that happened there may never be known. The matter has been, I believe, a subject of dispute among the most devout students of the saintly life as well as between such students and others of the more secular sort. It may be that St. Francis never spoke to a soul on the subject; it would be highly characteristic, and it is certain in any case that he said very little; I think he is only alleged to have spoken of it to one man. Subject however to such truly sacred doubts, I will confess that to me personally this one solitary and indirect report that has come down to us reads very like the report of something real; of some of those things that are more real than what we call daily realities. Even something as it were double and bewildering about the image seems to carry the impression of an experience shaking the senses; as does the passage in Revelation about the supernatural creatures full of eyes. It would seem that St. Francis beheld the heavens above him occupied by a vast winged being like a seraph spread out like a cross. There seems some mystery about whether the winged figure was itself crucified or in the posture of crucifixion, or whether it merely enclosed in its frame of wings some colossal crucifix. But it seems clear that there was some question of the former impression; for St. Bonaventura distinctly says that St. Francis doubted how a seraph could be crucified, since those awful and ancient principalities were without the infirmity of the Passion. St. Bonaventura suggests that the seeming contradiction may have meant that St. Francis was to be crucified as a spirit since he could not be crucified as a man; but whatever the meaning of the vision, the general idea of it is very vivid and overwhelming. St. Francis saw above him, filling the whole heavens, some vast immemorial unthinkable power, ancient like the Ancient of Days, whose calm men had conceived under the forms of winged bulls or monstrous cherubim, and all that winged wonder was in pain like a wounded bird. This seraphic suffering, it is said, pierced his soul with a sword of grief and pity; it may be inferred that some sort of mounting agony accompanied the ecstasy. Finally after some fashion the apocalypse faded from the sky and the agony within subsided; and silence and the natural air filled the morning twilight and settled slowly in the purple chasms and cleft abysses of the Apennines. The head of the solitary sank, amid all that relaxation and quiet in which time can drift by with the sense of something ended and complete; and as he stared downwards, he saw the marks of nails in his own hands.
Chapter IX
MIRACLES AND DEATH
The tremendous story of the Stigmata of St. Francis, which was the end of the last chapter, was in some sense the end of his life. In a logical sense, it would have been the end even if it had happened at the beginning. But truer traditions refer it to a later date and suggest that his remaining days on the earth had something about them of the lingering of a shadow. Whether St. Bonaventura was right in his hint that St. Francis saw in that seraphic vision something almost like a vast mirror of his own soul, that could at least suffer like an angel though not like a god, or whether it expressed under an imagery more primitive and colossal than common Christian art the primary paradox of the death of God, it is evident from its traditional consequences that it was meant for a crown and for a seal. It seems to have been after seeing this vision that he began to go blind.
But the incident has another and much less important place in this rough and limited outline. It is the natural occasion for considering briefly and collectively all the facts or fables of another aspect of the life of St. Francis; an aspect which is, I will not say more disputable, but certainly more disputed. I mean all that mass of testimony and tradition that concerns his miraculous powers and supernatural experiences, with which it would have been easy to stud and bejewel every page of the story; only that certain circumstances necessary to the conditions of this narration make it better to gather, somewhat hastily, all such jewels into a heap.
I have here adopted this course in order to make allowance for a prejudice. It is indeed to a great extent a prejudice of the past; a prejudice that is plainly disappearing in days of greater enlightenment, and especially of a greater range of scientific experiment and knowledge. But it is a prejudice that is still tenacious in many of an older generation and still traditional in many of the younger. I mean, of course, what used to be called the belief “that miracles do not happen,” as I think Matthew Arnold expressed it, in expressing the standpoint of so many of our Victorian uncles and great-uncles. In other words it was the remains of that sceptical simplification by which some of the philosophers of the early eighteenth century had popularised the impression (for a very short time) that we had discovered the regulations of the cosmos like the works of a clock, of so very simple a clock that it was possible to distinguish almost at a glance what could or could not have happened in human experience. It should be remembered that these real sceptics, of the golden age of scepticism, were quite as scornful of the first fancies of science as of the lingering legends of religion. Voltaire, when he was told that a fossil fish had been found on the peaks of the Alps, laughed openly at the tale and said that some fasting monk or hermit had dropped his fish-bones there; possibly in order to effect another monkish fraud. Everybody knows by this time that science has had its revenge on scepticism. The border between the credible and the incredible has not only become once more as vague as in any barbaric twilight; but the credible is obviously increasing and the incredible shrinking. A man in Voltaire’s time did not know what miracle he would next have to throw up. A man in our time does not know what miracle he will next have to swallow.
But long before these things had happened, in those days of my boyhood when I first saw the figure of St. Francis far away in the distance and drawing me even at that distance, in those Victorian days which did seriously separate the virtues from the miracles of the saints---even in those days I could not help feeling vaguely puzzled about how this method could be applied to history. Even then I did not quite understand, and even now I do not quite understand, on what principle one is to pick and choose in the chronicles of the past which seem to be all of a piece. All our knowledge of certain historical periods, and notably of the whole medieval period, rests on certain connected chronicles written by people who are some of them nameless and all of them dead, who cannot in any case be cross-examined and cannot in some cases be corroborated. I have never been quite clear about the nature of the right by which historians accepted masses of detail from them as definitely true, and suddenly denied their truthfulness when one detail was preternatural. I do not complain of their being sceptics; I am puzzled about why the sceptics are not more sceptical. I can understand their saying that these details would never have been included in a chronicle except by lunatics or liars; but in that case the only inference is that the chronicle was written by liars or lunatics. They will write for instance: “Monkish fanaticism found it easy to spread the report that miracles were already being worked at the tomb of Thomas Becket.” Why should they not say equally well, “Monkish fanaticism found it easy to spread the slander that four knights from King Henry’s court had assassinated Thomas Becket in the cathedral”? They would write something like this: “The credulity of the age readily believed that Joan of Arc had been inspired to point out the Dauphin although he was in disguise.” Why should they not write on the same principle: “The credulity of the age was such as to suppose that an obscure peasant girl could get an audience at the court of the Dauphin”? And so, in the present case, when they tell us there is a wild story that St. Francis flung himself into the fire and emerged scathless, upon what precise principle are they forbidden to tell us of a wild story that St. Francis flung himself into the camp of the ferocious Moslems and returned safe? I only ask for information; for I do not see the rationale of the thing myself. I will undertake to say there was not a word written of St. Francis by any contemporary who was himself incapable of believing and telling a miraculous story. Perhaps it is all monkish fables and there never was any St. Francis or any St. Thomas Becket or any Joan of Arc. This is undoubtedly a reductio ad absurdum; but it is a reductio ad absurdum of the view which thought all miracles absurd.
And in abstract logic this method of selection would lead to the wildest absurdities. An intrinsically incredible story could only mean that the authority was unworthy of credit. It could not mean that other parts of his story must be received with complete credulity. If somebody said he had met a man in yellow trousers, who proceeded to jump down his own throat, we should not exactly take our Bible oath or be burned at the stake for the statement that he wore yellow trousers. If somebody claimed to have gone up in a blue balloon and found that the moon was made of green cheese, we should not exactly take an affidavit that the balloon was blue any more than that the moon was green. And the really logical conclusion from throwing doubts on all tales like the miracles of St. Francis was to throw doubts on the existence of men like St. Francis. And there really was a modern moment, a sort of high-water mark of insane scepticism, when this sort of thing was really said or done. People used to go about saying that there was no such person as St. Patrick; which is every bit as much of a human and historical howler as saying there was no such person as St. Francis. There was a time, for instance, when the madness of mythological explanation had dissolved a large part of solid history under the universal and luxuriant warmth and radiance of the Sun-Myth. I believe that that particular sun has already set, but there have been any number of moons and meteors to take its place.
St. Francis, of course, would make a magnificent Sun-Myth. How could anybody miss the chance of being a Sun-Myth when he is actually best known by a song called The Canticle of the Sun? It is needless to point out that the fire in Syria was the dawn in the East and the bleeding wounds in Tuscany the sunset in the West. I could expound this theory at considerable length; only, as so often happens to such fine theorists, another and more promising theory occurs to me. I cannot think how everybody, including myself, can have overlooked the fact that the whole tale of St. Francis is of Totemistic origin. It is unquestionably a tale that simply swarms with totems. The Franciscan woods are as full of them as any Red Indian fable. Francis is made to call himself an ass, because in the original mythos Francis was merely the name given to the real four-footed donkey, afterwards vaguely evolved into a half-human god or hero. And that, no doubt, is why I used to feel that the Brother Wolf and Sister Bird of St. Francis were somehow like the Brer Fox and Sis Cow of Uncle Remus. Some say there is an innocent stage of infancy in which we do really believe that a cow talked or a fox made a tar baby. Anyhow there is an innocent period of intellectual growth in which we do sometimes really believe that St. Patrick was a Sun-Myth or St. Francis a Totem. But for the most of us both those phases of paradise are past.
As I shall suggest in a moment, there is one sense in which we can for practical purposes distinguish between probable and improbable things in such a story. It is not so much a question of cosmic criticism about the nature of the event as of literary criticism about the nature of the story. Some stories are told much more seriously than others. But apart from this, I shall not attempt here any definite differentiation between them. I shall not do so for a practical reason affecting the utility of the proceeding; I mean the fact that in a practical sense the whole of this matter is again in the melting pot, from which many things may emerge moulded into what rationalism would have called monsters. The fixed points of faith and philosophy do indeed remain always the same. Whether a man believes that fire in one case could fail to burn depends on why he thinks it generally does burn. If it burns nine sticks out of ten because it is its nature or doom to do so, then it will burn the tenth stick as well. If it burns nine sticks because it is the will of God that it should, then it might be the will of God that the tenth should be unburned. Nobody can get behind that fundamental difference about the reason of things; and it is as rational for a theist to believe in miracles as for an atheist to disbelieve in them. In other words there is only one intelligent reason why a man does not believe in miracles and that is that he does believe in materialism. But these fixed points of faith and philosophy are things for a theoretical work and have no particular place here. And in the matter of history and biography, which have their place here, nothing is fixed at all. The world is in a welter of the possible and impossible, and nobody knows what will be the next scientific hypothesis to support some ancient superstition. Three-quarters of the miracles attributed to St. Francis would already be explained by psychologists, not indeed as a Catholic explains them, but as a materialist must necessarily refuse to explain them. There is one whole department of the miracles of St. Francis; the miracles of healing. What is the good of a superior sceptic throwing them away as unthinkable, at the moment when faith-healing is already a big booming Yankee business like Barnum’s Show? There is another whole department analogous to the tales of Christ “perceiving men’s thoughts.” What is the use of censoring them and blacking them out because they are marked “miracles,” when thought reading is already a parlour game like musical chairs? There is another whole department, to be studied separately if such scientific study were possible, of the well-attested wonders worked from his relics and fragmentary possessions. What is the use of dismissing all that as inconceivable, when even these common psychical parlour tricks turn perpetually upon touching some familiar object or holding in the hand some personal possession? I do not believe, of course, that these tricks are of the same type as the good works of the saint; save perhaps in the sense of Diabolus simius Dei. But it is not a question of what I believe and why, but of what the sceptic disbelieves and why. And the moral for the practical biographer and historian is that he must wait till things settle down a little more, before he claims to disbelieve anything.
This being so he can choose between two courses; and not without some hesitation, I have here chosen between them. The best and boldest course would be to tell the whole story in a straightforward way, miracles and all, as the original historians told it. And to this sane and simple course the new historians will probably have to return. But it must be remembered that this book is avowedly only an introduction to St. Francis or the study of St. Francis. Those who need an introduction are in their nature strangers. With them the object is to get them to listen to St. Francis at all; and in doing so it is perfectly legitimate so to arrange the order of the facts that the familiar come before the unfamiliar and those they can at once understand before those they have a difficulty in understanding. I should only be too thankful if this thin and scratchy sketch contains a line or two that attracts men to study St. Francis for themselves; and if they do study him for themselves, they will soon find that the supernatural part of the story seems quite as natural as the rest. But it was necessary that my outline should be a merely human one, since I was only presenting his claim on all humanity, including sceptical humanity. I therefore adopted the alternative course, of showing first that nobody but a born fool could fail to realise that Francis of Assisi was a very real historical human being; and then summarising briefly in this chapter the superhuman powers that were certainly a part of that history and humanity. It only remains to say a few words about some distinctions that may reasonably be observed in the matter by any man of any views; that he may not confuse the point and climax of the saint’s life with the fancies or rumours that were really only the fringes of his reputation.
There is so immense a mass of legends and anecdotes about St. Francis of Assisi, and there are so many admirable compilations that cover nearly all of them, that I have been compelled within these narrow limits to pursue a somewhat narrow policy; that of following one line of explanation and only mentioning one anecdote here or there because it illustrates that explanation. If this is true about all the legends and stories, it is especially true about the miraculous legends and the supernatural stories. If we were to take some stories as they stand, we should receive a rather bewildered impression that the biography contains more supernatural events than natural ones. Now it is clean against Catholic tradition, co-incident in so many points with common sense, to suppose that this is really the proportion of these things in practical human life. Moreover, even considered as supernatural or preternatural stories, they obviously fall into certain different classes, not so much by our experience of miracles as by our experience of stories. Some of them have the character of fairy stories in their form even more than their incident. They are obviously tales told by the fire to peasants or the children of peasants, under conditions in which nobody thinks he is propounding a religious doctrine to be received or rejected, but only rounding off a story in the most symmetrical way, according to that sort of decorative scheme or pattern that runs through all fairy stories. Others are obviously in their form most emphatically evidence; that is they are testimony that is truth or lies; and it will be very hard for any judge of human nature to think they are lies.
It is admitted that the story of the Stigmata is not a legend but can only be a lie. I mean that it is certainly not a late legendary accretion added afterwards to the fame of St. Francis; but is something that started almost immediately with his earliest biographers. It is practically necessary to suggest that it was a conspiracy; indeed there has been some disposition to put the fraud upon the unfortunate Elias, whom so many parties have been disposed to treat as a useful universal villain. It has been said, indeed, that these early biographers, St. Bonaventura and Celano and the Three Companions, though they declare that St. Francis received the mystical wounds, do not say that they themselves saw those wounds. I do not think this argument conclusive; because it only arises out of the very nature of the narrative. The Three Companions are not in any case making an affidavit; and therefore none of the admitted parts of their story are in the form of an affidavit. They are writing a chronicle of a comparatively impersonal and very objective description. They do not say, “I saw St. Francis’s wounds”; they say, “St. Francis received wounds.” But neither do they say, “I saw St. Francis go into the Portiuncula”; they say, “St. Francis went into the Portiuncula.” But I still cannot understand why they should be trusted as eye-witnesses about the one fact and not trusted as eye-witnesses about the other. It is all of a piece; it would be a most abrupt and abnormal interruption in their way of telling the story if they suddenly began to curse and to swear, and give their names and addresses, and take their oath that they themselves saw and verified the physical facts in question. It seems to me, therefore, that this particular discussion goes back to the general question I have already mentioned; the question of why these chronicles should be credited at all, if they are credited with abounding in the incredible. But that again will probably be found to revert, in the last resort, to the mere fact that some men cannot believe in miracles because they are materialists. That is logical enough; but they are bound to deny the preternatural as much in the testimony of a modern scientific professor as in that of a medieval monkish chronicler. And there are plenty of professors for them to contradict by this time.
But whatever may be thought of such supernaturalism in the comparatively material and popular sense of supernatural acts, we shall miss the whole point of St. Francis, especially of St. Francis after Alverno, if we do not realise that he was living a supernatural life. And there is more and more of such supernaturalism in his life as he approaches towards his death. This element of the supernatural did not separate him from the natural; for it was the whole point of his position that it united him more perfectly to the natural. It did not make him dismal or dehumanised; for it was the whole meaning of his message that such mysticism makes a man cheerful and humane. But it was the whole point of his position, and it was the whole meaning of his message, that the power that did it was a supernatural power. If this simple distinction were not apparent from the whole of his life, it would be difficult for any one to miss it in reading the account of his death.
In a sense he may be said to have wandered as a dying man, just as he had wandered as a living one. As it became more and more apparent that his health was failing, he seems to have been carried from place to place like a pageant of sickness or almost like a pageant of mortality. He went to Rieti, to Nursia, perhaps to Naples, certainly to Cortona by the lake of Perugia. But there is something profoundly pathetic, and full of great problems, in the fact that at last, as it would seem, his flame of life leapt up and his heart rejoiced when they saw afar off on the Assisian hill the solemn pillars of the Portiuncula. He who had become a vagabond for the sake of a vision, he who had denied himself all sense of place and possession, he whose whole gospel and glory it was to be homeless, received like a Parthian shot from nature, the sting of the sense of home. He also had his maladie du clocher, his sickness of the spire; though his spire was higher than ours. “Never,” he cried with the sudden energy of strong spirits in death, “never give up this place. If you would go anywhere or make any pilgrimage, return always to your home, for this is the holy house of God.” And the procession passed under the arches of his home; and he lay down on his bed and his brethren gathered round him for the last long vigil. It seems to me no moment for entering into the subsequent disputes about which successors he blessed or in what form and with what significance. In that one mighty moment he blessed us all.
After he had taken farewell of some of his nearest an especially some of his oldest friends, he was lifted at his own request off his own rude bed and laid on the bare ground; as some say clad only in a hair-shirt, as he had first gone forth into the wintry woods from the presence of his father. It was the final assertion of his great fixed idea; of praise and thanks springing to their most towering height out of nakedness and nothing. As he lay there we may be certain that his seared and blinded eyes saw nothing but their object and their origin. We may be sure that the soul, in its last inconceivable isolation, was face to face with nothing less than God Incarnate and Christ Crucified. But for the men standing around him there must have been other thoughts mingling with these; and many memories must have gathered like ghosts in the twilight, as that day wore on and that great darkness descended in which we all lost a friend. For what lay dying there was not Dominic of the Dogs of God, a leader in logical and controversial wars that could be reduced to a plan and handed on like a plan; a master of a machine of democratic discipline by which others could organise themselves. What was passing from the world was a person; a poet; an outlook on life like a light that was never after on sea or land; a thing not to be replaced or repeated while the earth endures. It has been said that there was only one Christian, who died on the cross; it is truer to say in this sense that there was only one Franciscan, whose name was Francis. Huge and happy as was the popular work he left behind him, there was something that he could not leave behind, any more than a landscape painter can leave his eyes in his will. It was an artist in life who was here called to be an artist in death; and he had a better right than Nero, his anti-type, to say Qualis artifexpereo. For Nero’s life was full of posing for the occasion like that of an actor; while the Umbrian’s had a natural and continuous grace like that of an athlete. But St. Francis had better things to say and better things to think about, and his thoughts were caught upwards where we cannot follow them, in divine and dizzy heights to which death alone can lift us up.
Round about him stood the brethren in their brown habits, those that had loved him even if they afterwards disputed with each other. There was Bernard, his first friend, and Angelo, who had served as his secretary, and Elias, his successor, whom tradition tried to turn into a sort of Judas, but who seems to have been little worse than an official in the wrong place. His tragedy was that he had a Franciscan habit without a Franciscan heart, or at any rate with a very un-Franciscan head. But though he made a bad Franciscan, he might have made a decent Dominican. Anyhow, there is no reason to doubt that he loved Francis, for ruffians and savages did that. Anyhow he stood among the rest as the hours passed and the shadows lengthened in the house of the Portiuncula; and nobody need think so ill of him as to suppose that his thoughts were then in the tumultuous future, in the ambitions and controversies of his later years.
A man might fancy that the birds must have known when it happened; and made some motion in the evening sky. As they had once, according to the tale, scattered to the four winds of heaven in the pattern of a cross at his signal of dispersion, they might now have written in such dotted lines a more awful augury across the sky. Hidden in the woods perhaps were little cowering creatures never again to be so much noticed and understood; and it has been said that animals are sometimes conscious of things to which man, their spiritual superior, is for the moment blind. We do not know whether any shiver passed through all the thieves and the outcasts and the outlaws, to tell them what had happened to him who never knew the nature of scorn.
But at least in the passages and porches of the Portiuncula there was a sudden stillness, where all the brown figures stood like bronze statues; for the stopping of the great heart that had not broken till it held the world.
Chapter X
THE TESTAMENT OF ST. FRANCIS
In one sense doubtless it is a sad irony that St. Francis, who all his life had desired all men to agree, should have died amid increasing disagreements. But we must not exaggerate this discord, as some have done, so as to turn it into a mere defeat of all his ideals. There are some who represent his work as having been merely ruined by the wickedness of the world, or what they always assume to be the even greater wickedness of the Church.
This little book is an essay on St. Francis and not on the Franciscan Order, still less on the Catholic Church or the Papacy or the policy pursued towards the extreme Franciscans or the Fraticelli. It is therefore only necessary to note in a very few words what was the general nature of the controversy that raged after the great saint’s death, and to some extent troubled the last days of his life. The dominant detail was the interpretation of the vow of poverty, or the refusal of all possessions. Nobody so far as I know ever proposed to interfere with the vow of the individual friar that he would have no individual possessions. Nobody, that is, proposed to interfere with his negation of private property. But some Franciscans, invoking the authority of Francis on their side, went further than this and further I think than anybody else has ever gone. They proposed to abolish not only private property but property. That is, they refused to be corporately responsible for anything at all; for any buildings or stores or tools; they refused to own them collectively even when they used them collectively. It is perfectly true that many, especially among the first supporters of this view, were men of a splendid and selfless spirit, wholly devoted to the great saint’s ideal. It is also perfectly true that the Pope and the authorities of the Church did not think this conception was a workable arrangement, and went so far in modifying it as to set aside certain clauses in the great saint’s will. But it is not at all easy to see that it was a workable arrangement or even an arrangement at all; for it was really a refusal to arrange anything. Everybody knew of course that Franciscans were communists; but this was not so much being a communist as being an anarchist. Surely upon any argument somebody or something must be answerable for what happened to or in or concerning a number of historic edifices and ordinary goods and chattels. Many idealists of a socialistic sort, notably of the school of Mr. Shaw or Mr. Wells, have treated this dispute as if it were merely a case of the tyranny of wealthy and wicked pontiffs crushing the true Christianity of Christian Socialists. But in truth this extreme ideal was in a sense the very reverse of Socialist, or even social. Precisely the thing which these enthusiasts refused was that social ownership on which Socialism is built; what they primarily refused to do was what Socialists primarily exist to do; to own legally in their corporate capacity. Nor is it true that the tone of the Popes towards the enthusiasts was merely harsh and hostile. The Pope maintained for a long time a compromise which he had specially designed to meet their own conscientious objections, a compromise by which the Papacy itself held the property in a kind of trust for the owners who refused to touch it. The truth is that this incident shows two things which are common enough in Catholic history, but very little understood by the journalistic history of industrial civilisation. It shows that the Saints were sometimes great men when the Popes were small men. But it also shows that great men are sometimes wrong when small men are right. And it will be found, after all, very difficult for any candid and clear-headed outsider to deny that the Pope was right, when he insisted that the world was not made only for Franciscans.
For that was what was behind the quarrel. At the back of this particular practical question there was something much larger and more momentous, the stir and wind of which we can feel as we read the controversy. We might go so far as to put the ultimate truth thus. St. Francis was so great and original a man that he had something in him of what makes the founder of a religion. Many of his followers were more or less ready, in their hearts, to treat him as the founder of a religion. They were willing to let the Franciscan spirit escape from Christendom as the Christian spirit had escaped from Israel. They were willing to let it eclipse Christendom as the Christian spirit had eclipsed Israel. Francis, the fire that ran through the roads of Italy, was to be the beginning of a conflagration in which the old Christian civilisation was to be consumed. That was the point the Pope had to settle; whether Christendom should absorb Francis or Francis Christendom. And he decided rightly, apart from the duties of his place; for the Church could include all that was good in the Franciscans and the Franciscans could not include all that was good in the Church. There is one consideration which, though sufficiently clear in the whole story, has not perhaps been sufficiently noted, especially by those who cannot see the case for a certain Catholic common sense larger even than Franciscan enthusiasm. Yet it arises out of the very merits of the man whom they so rightly admire. Francis of Assisi, as has been said again and again, was a poet; that is, he was a person who could express his personality. Now it is everywhere the mark of this sort of man that his very limitations make him larger. He is what he is, not only by what he has, but in some degree by what he has not. But the limits that make the lines of such a personal portrait cannot be made the limits of all humanity. St. Francis is a very strong example of this quality in the man of genius, that in him even what is negative is positive, because it is part of a character. An excellent example of what I mean may be found in his attitude towards learning and scholarship. He ignored and in some degree discouraged books and book-learning; and from his own point of view and that of his own work in the world he was absolutely right. The whole point of his message was to be so simple that the village idiot could understand it. The whole point of his point of view was that it looked out freshly upon a fresh world, that might have been made that morning. Save for the great primal things, the Creation and the Story of Eden, the first Christmas and the first Easter, the world had no history. But is it desired or desirable that the whole Catholic Church should have no history?
It is perhaps the chief suggestion of this book that St. Francis walked the world like the Pardon of God. I mean that his appearance marked the moment when men could be reconciled not only to God but to nature and, most difficult of all, to themselves. For it marked the moment when all the stale paganism that had poisoned the ancient world was at last worked out of the social system. He opened the gates of the Dark Ages as of a prison of purgatory, where men had cleansed themselves as hermits in the desert or heroes in the barbarian wars. It was in fact his whole function to tell men to start afresh and, in that sense, to tell them to forget. If they were to turn over a new leaf and begin a fresh page with the first large letters of the alphabet, simply drawn and brilliantly coloured in the early mediaeval manner, it was clearly a part of that particular childlike cheerfulness that they should paste down the old page that was all black and bloody with horrid things. For instance, I have already noted that there is not a trace in the poetry of this first Italian poet of all that pagan mythology which lingered long after paganism. The first Italian poet seems the only man in the world who has never even heard of Virgil. This was exactly right for the special sense in which he is the first Italian poet. It is quite right that he should call a nightingale a nightingale, and not have its song spoilt or saddened by the terrible tales of Itylus or Procne. In short, it is really quite right and quite desirable that St. Francis should never have heard of Virgil. But do we really desire that Dante should never have heard of Virgil? Do we really desire that Dante should never have read any pagan mythology? It has been truly said that the use that Dante makes of such fables is altogether part of a deeper orthodoxy; that his huge heathen fragments, his gigantic figures of Minos or of Charon, only give a hint of some enormous natural religion behind all history and from the first foreshadowing the Faith. It is well to have the Sybil as well as David in the Dies Irae. That St. Francis would have burned all the leaves of all the books of the Sybil, in exchange for one fresh leaf from the nearest tree, is perfectly true; and perfectly proper to St. Francis. But it is good to have the Dies Irae as well as the Canticle of the Sun.
By this thesis, in short, the coming of St. Francis was like the birth of a child in a dark house, lifting its doom; a child that grows up unconscious of the tragedy and triumphs over it by his innocence. In him it is necessarily not only innocence but ignorance. It is the essence of the story that he should pluck at the green grass without knowing it grows over a murdered man or climb the apple-tree without knowing it was the gibbet of a suicide. It was such an amnesty and reconciliation that the freshness of the Franciscan spirit brought to all the world. But it does not follow that it ought to impose its ignorance on all the world. And I think it would have tried to impose it on all the world. For some Franciscans it would have seemed right that Franciscan poetry should expel Benedictine prose. For the symbolic child it was quite rational. It was right enough that for such a child the world should be a large new nursery with blank white-washed walls, on which he could draw his own pictures in chalk in the childish fashion, crude in outline and gay in colour; the beginnings of all our art. It was right enough that to him such a nursery should seem the most magnificent mansion of the imagination of man. But in the Church of God are many mansions.
Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church. If the Franciscan movement had turned into a new religion, it would after all have been a narrow religion. In so far as it did turn here and there into a heresy, it was a narrow heresy. It did what heresy always does; it set the mood against the mind. The mood was indeed originally the good and glorious mood of the great St. Francis, but it was not the whole mind of God or even of man. And it is a fact that the mood itself degenerated, as the mood turned into a monomania. A sect that came to be called the Fraticelli declared themselves the true sons of St. Francis and broke away from the compromises of Rome in favour of what they would have called the complete programme of Assisi. In a very little while these loose Franciscans began to look as ferocious as Flagellants. They launched new and violent vetoes; they denounced marriage; that is, they denounced mankind. In the name of the most human of saints they declared war upon humanity. They did not perish particularly through being persecuted; many of them were eventually persuaded; and the unpersuadable rump of them that remained remained without producing anything in the least calculated to remind anybody of the real St. Francis. What was the matter with these people was that they were mystics; mystics and nothing else but mystics; mystics and not Catholics; mystics and not Christians; mystics and not men. They rotted away because, in the most exact sense, they would not listen to reason. And St. Francis, however wild and romantic his gyrations might appear to many, always hung on to reason by one invisible and indestructible hair.
The great saint was sane; and with the very sound of the word sanity, as at a deeper chord struck upon a harp, we come back to something that was indeed deeper than everything about him that seemed an almost elvish eccentricity. He was not a mere eccentric because he was always turning towards the centre and heart of the maze; he took the queerest and most zigzag short cuts through the wood, but he was always going home. He was not only far too humble to be an heresiarch, but he was far too human to desire to be an extremist, in the sense of an exile at the ends of the earth. The sense of humour which salts all the stories of his escapades alone prevented him from ever hardening into the solemnity of sectarian self-righteousness. He was by nature ready to admit that he was wrong; and if his followers had on some practical points to admit that he was wrong, they only admitted that he was wrong in order to prove that he was right. For it is they, his real followers, who have really proved that he was right and even in transcending some of his negations have triumphantly extended and interpreted his truth. The Franciscan order did not fossilise or break off short like something of which the true purpose has been frustrated by official tyranny or internal treason. It was this, the central and orthodox trunk of it, that afterwards bore fruit for the world. It counted among its sons Bonaventura, the great mystic, and Bernardino, the popular preacher, who filled Italy with the very beatific buffooneries of a Jongleur de Dieu. It counted Raymond Lully with his strange learning and his large and daring plans for the conversion of the world; a man intensely individual exactly as St. Francis was intensely individual. It counted Roger Bacon, the first naturalist whose experiments with light and water had all the luminous quaintness that belongs to the beginnings of natural history; and whom even the most material scientists have hailed as a father of science. It is not merely true that these were great men who did great work for the world; it is also true that they were a certain kind of men keeping the spirit and savour of a certain kind of man, that we can recognise in them a taste and tang of audacity and simplicity, and know them for the sons of St. Francis.
For that is the full and final spirit in which we should turn to St. Francis; in the spirit of thanks for what he has done. He was above all things a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is called thanksgiving. If another great man wrote a grammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of acceptance; a grammar of gratitude. He understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss. He knew that the praise of God stands on its strongest ground when it stands on nothing. He knew that we can best measure the towering miracle of the mere fact of existence if we realise that but for some strange mercy we should not even exist. And something of that larger truth is repeated in a lesser form in our own relations with so mighty a maker of history. He also is a giver of things we could not have even thought of for ourselves; he also is too great for anything but gratitude. From him came a whole awakening of the world and a dawn in which all shapes and colours could be seen anew. The mighty men of genius who made the Christian civilisation that we know appear in history almost as his servants and imitators. Before Dante was, he had given poetry to Italy; before St. Louis ruled, he had risen as the tribune of the poor; and before Giotto had painted the pictures, he had enacted the scenes. That great painter who began the whole human inspiration of European painting had himself gone to St. Francis to be inspired. It is said that when St. Francis staged in his own simple fashion a Nativity Play of Bethlehem, with kings and angels in the stiff and gay mediaeval garments and the golden wigs that stood for haloes, a miracle was wrought full of the Franciscan glory. The Holy Child was a wooden doll or bambino, and it was said that he embraced it and that the image came to life in his arms. He assuredly was not thinking of lesser things; but we may at least say that one thing came to life in his arms; and that was the thing that we call the drama. Save for his intense individual love of song, he did not perhaps himself embody this spirit in any of these arts. He was the spirit that was embodied. He was the spiritual essence and substance that walked the world, before any one had seen these things in visible forms derived from it: a wandering fire as if from nowhere, at which men more material could light both torches and tapers. He was the soul of mediaeval civilisation before it even found a body. Another and quite different stream of spiritual inspiration derives largely from him; all that reforming energy of mediaeval and modern times that goes to the burden of Deus est Deus Pauperum. His abstract ardour for human beings was in a multitude of just mediaeval laws against the pride and cruelty of riches; it is to-day behind much that is loosely called Christian Socialist and can more correctly be called Catholic Democrat. Neither on the artistic nor the social side would anybody pretend that these things would not have existed without him; yet it is strictly true to say that we cannot now imagine them without him; since he has lived and changed the world.
And something of that sense of impotence which was more than half his power will descend on any one who knows what that inspiration has been in history, and can only record it in a series of straggling and meagre sentences. He will know something of what St. Francis meant by the great and good debt that cannot be paid. He will feel at once the desire to have done infinitely more and the futility of having done anything. He will know what it is to stand under such a deluge of a dead man’s marvels, and have nothing in return to establish against it; to have nothing to set up under the overhanging, overwhelming arches of such a temple of time and eternity, but this brief candle burnt out so quickly before his shrine.
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM OF ST. FRANCIS
A sketch of St. Francis of Assisi in modern English may be written in one of three ways. Between these the writer must make his selection; and the third way, which is adopted here, is in some respects the most difficult of all. At least, it would be the most difficult if the other two were not impossible.
First, he may deal with this great and most amazing man as a figure in secular history and a model of social virtues. He may describe this divine demagogue as being, as he probably was, the world’s one quite sincere democrat. He may say (what means very little) that St. Francis was in advance of his age. He may say (what is quite true) that St. Francis anticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the modern mood; the love of nature; the love of animals; the sense of social compassion; the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity and even of property. All those things that nobody understood before Wordsworth were familiar to St. Francis. All those things that were first discovered by Tolstoy could have been taken for granted by St Francis. He could be presented, not only as a human but a humanitarian hero; indeed as the first hero of humanism. He has been described as a sort of morning star of the Renaissance. And in comparison with all these things, his ascetical theology can be ignored or dismissed as a contempory accident, which was fortunately not a fatal accident. His religion can be regarded as a superstition, but an inevitable superstition, from which not even genius could wholly free itself; in the consideration of which it would be unjust to condemn St. Francis for his self denial or unduly chide him for his chastity. It is quite true that even from so detached a standpoint his stature would still appear heroic. There would still be a great deal to be said about the man who tried to end the Crusades by talking to the Saracens or who interceded with the Emporer for the birds. The writer might describe in a purely historical spirit the whole of the Franciscan inspiration that was felt in the painting of Giotto, in the poetry of Dante, in the miracle plays that made possible the modern drama, and in so many things that are already appreciated by the modern culture. He may try to do it, as others have done, almost without raising any religious question at all. In short, he may try to tell the story of a saint without God; which is like being told to write the life of Nansen and forbidden to mention the North Pole.
Second, he may go to the opposite extreme, and decide, as it were, to be defiantly devotional. He may make the theological enthusiasm as thoroughly the theme as it was the theme of the first Franciscans. He may treat religion as the real thing that it was to the real Francis of Assisi. He can find an austere joy, so to speak, in parading the paradoxes of asceticism and all the topsy-turveydom of humility. He can stamp the whole history with the Stigmata, record fasts like fights against a dragon; till in the vague modern mind St Francis is as dark a figure as St. Dominic. In short, he can produce what many in our world will regard as a sort of photographic negative; the reversal of all lights and shades; what the foolish will find as impenetrable as darkness and even many of the wise will find almost as invisible as if it were written in silver upon white. Such a study of St. Francis would be unintelligible to anyone who does not share his religion, perhaps only partly intelligible to anyone who does not share his vocation. According to degrees of judgement, it will be regarded as something too bad or too good for the world. The only difficulty about doing the thing in this way is that it cannot be done. It would really require a saint to write about the life of a saint. In the present case the objections to such a course are insuperable.
Third, he may try to do what I have tried to do here; and as I have already suggested, the course has peculiar problems of its own. The writer may put himself in the position of the ordinary modern outsider and enquirer; as indeed the present writer is still largely and was once entirely in that position. He may start from the standpoint of a man who already admires St. Francis, but only for those things which such a man finds admirable. In other words he may assume that the reader is at least as enlightened as Renan or Matthew Arnold; but in the light of that enlightenment he may try to illimunate what Renan and Matthew Arnold left dark. He may try to use what is understood to explain what is not understood. He may try to say to the modern English reader: “Here is an historical character which is admittedly attractive to many of us already, by its gaiety, its romantic imagination, its spiritual courtesy and cameraderie, but which also contains elements (evidently equally sincere and emphatic) which seem to you quite remote and repulsive. But after all, this man was a man and not half a dozen men. What seems inconsistency to you did not seem inconsistency to him. Let us see whether we can understand, with the help of the existing understanding, these other things that now seem to be doubly dark, by their intrinsic gloom and their ironic contrast.” I do not mean, of course, that I can really reach a psychological completeness in this crude and curt outline. But I mean that this is the only controversial condition that I shall here assume; that I am dealing with the sympathetic outsider. I shall not assume any more or any less agreement than this. A materialist may not care whether the inconsistencies are reconciled or not. A Catholic may not see any inconsistencies to reconcile. But I am here addressing the ordinary common man, sympathetic but sceptical, and I can only rather hazily hope that, by approaching the great saint’s story through what is evidently picturesque and popular about it, I may at least leave the reader understanding a little more than he did before of the consistency of a complete character; that by approaching it in this way, we may at least get a glimmering of why the poet who praised his lord the sun, often hid himself in a dark cavern, of why the saint who was so gentle with his Brother the Wolf was so harsh to his Brother the Ass (as he nicknamed his own body), of why the troubadour who said that love set his heart on fire separated himself from women, of why the singer who rejoiced in the strength and gaiety of the fire deliberately rolled himself in the snow, of why the very song which cries with all the passion of a pagan, “Praised be God for our Sister, Mother Earth, which brings forth varied fruits and grass and glowing flowers,” ends almost with the words “Praised be God for our Sister, the death of the body.”
Renan and Matthew Arnold failed utterly at this test. They were content to follow Francis with their praises until they were stopped by their prejudices; the stubborn prejudices of the sceptic. The moment Francis began to do something they did not understand or did not like, they did not try to understand, still less to like it; they simply turned their backs on the whole business and “walked no more with him.” No man will get any further along a path of historical enquiry in that fashion. These skeptics are really driven to drop the whole subject in despair, to leave the most simple and sincere of all historical characters as a mass of contradiction, to be praised on the principle of the curate’s egg. Arnold refers to the asceticism of Alverno almost hurriedly, as if it were an unlucky but undeniable blot on the beauty of the story; or rather as if it were a pitiable break-down and bathos at the end of story. Now this is simply to be stone-blind to the whole point of any story. To represent Mount Alverno as the mere collapse of Francis is exactly like representing Mount Calvary as the mere collapse of Christ. Those mountains are mountains, whatever else they are, and it is nonsense to say (like the Red Queen) that they are comparitive hollows or negative holes in the ground. They were quite manifestly meant to be culminations and landmarks. To treat the Stigmata as a sort of scandal, to be touched on tenderly but with pain, is exactly like treating the original five wounds of Jesus Christ as five blots on his character. You may dislike the idea of asceticism; you may dislike equally the idea of martyrdom; for that matter you may have an honest and natural dislike of the whole conception of sacrifice symbolised by the cross. But if it is an intelligent dislike, you will retain the capacity for seeing the point of the story; the story of a martyr or even the story of a monk. You will not be able rationally to read the Gospel and regard the Crucifixion as an afterthought or an anti-climax or an accident in the life of Christ; it is obviously the point of the story like the point of a sword, the sword that pierced the heart of the Mother of God.
And you will not be able rationally to read the story of a man presented as a Mirror of Christ without understanding his final phase as a Man of Sorrows, and at least artistically appreciating the appropriatness of his receiving, in a cloud of mystery and isolation, inflicted by no human hand, the unhealed everlasting wounds that heal the world.
The practical reconciliation of the gaiety and austerity I must leave the story itself to suggest. But since I have mentioned Matthew Arnold and Renan and the rationalistic admirers of St. Francis, I will here give a hint of what it seems to me most advisable for such readers to keep in mind. These distinguished writers found things like the Stigmata a stumbling block because to them a religion was a philosophy. It was an impersonal thing; and it is only the most personal passion that provides here an approximate earthly parallel. A man will not roll in the snow for a stream of tendency by which all things fulfil the law of their being. He will not go without food in the name of something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. He will do things like this, or pretty like this, under quite a different impulse. He will do these things when he is in love. The first fact to realise about St Francis is involved with the first fact with which his story starts; that when he said from the first that he was a Troubadour, and said later that he was a Troubadour of a newer and nobler romance, he was not using a mere metaphor, but understood himself much better than the scholars understand him. He was, to the last agonies of asceticism, a Troubadour. He was a Lover. He was a lover of God and he was really and truly a lover of men; possibly a much rarer mystical vocation. A lover of men is very nearly the opposite of a philanthropist; indeed the pedantry of the Greek word carries something like a satire on itself. A philanthropist may be said to love anthropoids. But as St. Francis did not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ. Say, if you think so, that he was a lunatic loving an imaginary person; but an imaginary person, not an imaginary idea. And for the modern reader the clue to the asceticism and all the rest can be found in the stories of lovers when they seemed to be rather like lunatics. Tell it as the tale of one of the Troubadours, and the wild things he would do for his lady, and the whole of the modern puzzle disappears. In such a romance there would be no contradiction between the poet gathering flowers in the sun and enduring a freezing vigil in the snow, between his praising all earthly and bodily beauty and then refusing to eat, and between his glorifying gold and purple and perversely going in rags, between his showing pathetically a hunger for a happy life and a thirst for a heroic death. All these riddles would be easily be resolved in the simplicity of any noble love; only this was so noble a love that nine out of ten men have hardly even heard of it. We shall see later that this parallel of the earthly lover has a very practical relation to the problems of his life, as to his relations with his father and his friends and their families. The modern reader will almost always find that if he could only find this kind of love as a reality, he could feel this kind of extravagance as a romance. But I only note it here as a preliminary point because, though it is very far from being the final truth in the matter, it is the best approach to it. The reader cannot even begin to see the sense of a story that may well seem to him a very wild one, until he understands that to this great mystic his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love affair. And the only purpose of this prefatory chapter is to explain the limits of the present book; which is only addressed to that part of the modern world which finds in St. Francis a certain modern difficulty; which can admire him yet hardly accept him, or which can appreciate the saint almost without the sanctity. And my only claim even to attempt such a task is that I myself have for so long been in various stages of such a condition. Many thousand things that I now partly comprehend I should have thought utterly incomprehensible, many things I now hold sacred I should have scouted as utterly superstitious, many things that seem to me lucid and enlightened now they are seen from the inside I should honestly have called dark and barbarous seen from the outside, when long ago in those days of boyhood my fancy first caught fire with the glory of Francis of Assisi. I too have lived in Arcady; but even in Arcady I met one walking in a brown habit who loved the woods better than Pan. The figure in the brown habit stands above the hearth in the room where I write, and alone among many such images, at no stage of my pilgrimage has he ever seemed to me a stranger. There is something of a harmony between the hearth and the firelight and my own first pleasure in his words about the brother fire; for he stands far enough back in my memory to mingle with all those more domestic dreams of the first days. Even the fantastic shadows thrown by fire make a sort of shadow pantomine that belongs to the nursery; yet the shadows were even then the shadows of his favourite beast and birds, as he saw them, grotesque but haloed with the love of God. His Brother Wolf and Brother Sheep seemed then almost like the Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit of a more Christian Uncle Remus. I have come slowly to see many more marvellous aspects of such a man, but I have never lost that one. His figure stands on a sort of bridge connecting my boyhood with my conversion to many other things; for the romance of his religion has penetrated even the rationalism of that vague Victorian time. In so far as I have had this experience, I may be able to lead others a little further along that road; but only a very little further. Nobody knows better than I do now that it is a road upon which angels might fear to tread; but though I am certain of failure I am not altogether overcome by fear; for he suffered fools gladly.
Renan e Matthew Arnold fallirono del tutto a questa prova. Si accontentarono di seguire Francesco con le loro lodi finché non furono fermati dai loro pregiudizi; i pregiudizi ostinati dello scettico. Nel momento in cui Francesco cominciò a fare qualcosa che non comprendevano o non gradivano, non cercarono di comprenderlo, e ancor meno di gradirlo; voltarono semplicemente le spalle a tutta la faccenda e «non camminarono più con lui». Nessuno procederà oltre lungo un sentiero di indagine storica in tal modo. Questi scettici sono in realtà spinti ad abbandonare l’intero soggetto nella disperazione, a lasciare il più semplice e sincero di tutti i personaggi storici come una massa di contraddizioni, da lodarsi secondo il principio dell’uovo del curato. Arnold accenna all’ascetismo dell’Alvernia quasi in fretta, come se fosse una macchia sfortunata ma innegabile sulla bellezza della storia; o piuttosto come se fosse un pietoso crollo e un anticlimax alla fine del racconto. Ora, questo significa semplicemente essere ciechi come pietre di fronte al senso stesso di qualsiasi storia. Rappresentare il Monte Alvernia come il mero crollo di Francesco è esattamente come rappresentare il Monte Calvario come il mero crollo di Cristo. Quei monti sono monti, qualunque altra cosa siano, ed è un’assurdità dire (come la Regina Rossa) che siano avvallamenti relativi o buchi negativi nel terreno. Erano manifestamente destinati a essere culmini e punti di riferimento. Trattare le Stimmate come una sorta di scandalo, da sfiorare con tenerezza ma con dolore, è esattamente come trattare le cinque piaghe originarie di Gesù Cristo come cinque macchie sul suo carattere. Puoi non gradire l’idea dell’ascetismo; puoi ugualmente non gradire l’idea del martirio; e del resto puoi provare un’avversione onesta e naturale per l’intera concezione del sacrificio simboleggiato dalla croce. Ma se è un’avversione intelligente, conserverai la capacità di cogliere il senso della storia; la storia di un martire o persino la storia di un monaco. Non sarai in grado, razionalmente, di leggere il Vangelo e considerare la Crocifissione come un ripensamento o un anticlimax o un incidente nella vita di Cristo; essa è evidentemente il senso della storia come la punta di una spada, la spada che trafisse il cuore della Madre di Dio.
E non sarai in grado, razionalmente, di leggere la storia di un uomo presentato come uno Specchio di Cristo senza comprenderne la fase finale come Uomo dei Dolori, e senza almeno apprezzare artisticamente l’appropriatezza del suo ricevere, in una nube di mistero e di isolamento, inflitte da nessuna mano umana, le perpetue piaghe non rimarginate che risanano il mondo.
La pratica riconciliazione della gaiezza e dell’austerità devo lasciarla suggerire alla storia stessa. Ma poiché ho menzionato Matthew Arnold e Renan e gli ammiratori razionalisti di san Francesco, darò qui un cenno di ciò che mi sembra più opportuno che simili lettori tengano a mente. Questi illustri scrittori trovarono in cose come le Stimmate una pietra d’inciampo perché per loro una religione era una filosofia. Era una cosa impersonale; ed è soltanto la passione più personale a fornire qui un approssimativo parallelo terreno. Un uomo non si rotolerà nella neve per una corrente di tendenza mediante la quale tutte le cose adempiono la legge del proprio essere. Non rinuncerà al cibo nel nome di qualcosa, non noi stessi, che opera per la giustizia. Farà cose simili, o pressoché simili, sotto un impulso del tutto diverso. Farà queste cose quando è innamorato. Il primo fatto da cogliere riguardo a san Francesco è connesso con il primo fatto con cui la sua storia comincia; che quando disse fin dall’inizio di essere un Trovatore, e disse più tardi di essere un Trovatore di un romanzo più nuovo e più nobile, non stava usando una mera metafora, ma comprendeva se stesso assai meglio di quanto lo comprendano gli studiosi. Egli fu, fino alle ultime agonie dell’ascetismo, un Trovatore. Fu un Amante. Fu un amante di Dio ed era davvero e veramente un amante degli uomini; forse una vocazione mistica assai più rara. Un amante degli uomini è quasi esattamente l’opposto di un filantropo; anzi la pedanteria della parola greca reca in sé qualcosa come una satira di sé stessa. Di un filantropo si può dire che ami gli antropoidi. Ma come san Francesco non amava l’umanità bensì gli uomini, così non amava il Cristianesimo bensì Cristo. Di’ pure, se così pensi, che era un pazzo che amava una persona immaginaria; ma una persona immaginaria, non un’idea immaginaria. E per il lettore moderno la chiave dell’ascetismo e di tutto il resto può essere trovata nelle storie di innamorati quando sembravano piuttosto simili a pazzi. Raccontalo come il racconto di uno dei Trovatori, e delle cose folli che avrebbe fatto per la sua dama, e l’intero enigma moderno svanisce. In un tale romanzo non vi sarebbe alcuna contraddizione tra il poeta che raccoglie fiori al sole e sopporta una veglia gelida nella neve, tra il suo lodare ogni bellezza terrena e corporea e poi rifiutare di mangiare, e tra il suo glorificare l’oro e la porpora e andare perversamente in stracci, tra il suo mostrare pateticamente una fame di vita felice e una sete di una morte eroica. Tutti questi enigmi si risolverebbero facilmente nella semplicità di ogni nobile amore; solo che questo era un amore così nobile che nove uomini su dieci ne hanno a malapena sentito parlare. Vedremo più avanti che questo parallelo dell’amante terreno ha una relazione assai pratica con i problemi della sua vita, come con i suoi rapporti con il padre e con gli amici e le loro famiglie. Il lettore moderno scoprirà quasi sempre che, se solo potesse trovare questa specie di amore come realtà, potrebbe sentire questa specie di stravaganza come un romanzo. Ma lo annoto qui soltanto come punto preliminare perché, benché sia assai lontano dall’essere la verità ultima in materia, è il migliore avvicinamento ad essa. Il lettore non può nemmeno cominciare a scorgere il senso di una storia che ben potrà sembrargli assai stravagante, finché non comprende che per questo grande mistico la sua religione non era una cosa come una teoria, ma una cosa come una relazione d’amore. E l’unico scopo di questo capitolo introduttivo è spiegare i limiti del presente libro; il quale è rivolto soltanto a quella parte del mondo moderno che trova in san Francesco una certa difficoltà moderna; che può ammirarlo eppure a stento accettarlo, o che può apprezzare il santo quasi senza la santità. E la mia unica pretesa anche solo di tentare un simile compito è che io stesso sono stato così a lungo nei vari stadi di una tale condizione. Molte migliaia di cose che ora comprendo in parte le avrei ritenute del tutto incomprensibili, molte cose che ora tengo per sacre le avrei scacciate come del tutto superstiziose, molte cose che mi sembrano lucide e illuminate ora che sono viste dall’interno le avrei onestamente dette oscure e barbare viste dall’esterno, quando molto tempo fa, in quei giorni della fanciullezza, la mia fantasia prese per la prima volta fuoco con la gloria di Francesco d’Assisi. Anch’io ho vissuto in Arcadia; ma persino in Arcadia incontrai uno che camminava in un saio bruno e amava i boschi più di Pan. La figura nel saio bruno si erge sopra il focolare nella stanza dove scrivo, e sola fra molte immagini simili, in nessuna tappa del mio pellegrinaggio egli mi è mai sembrato un estraneo. Vi è qualcosa come un’armonia tra il focolare e la luce del fuoco e il mio stesso primo piacere per le sue parole sul fratello fuoco; poiché egli sta abbastanza indietro nella mia memoria da mescolarsi con tutti quei più domestici sogni dei primi giorni. Persino le ombre fantastiche proiettate dal fuoco formano una sorta di pantomima d’ombra che appartiene alla stanza dei bambini; eppure le ombre erano già allora le ombre delle sue bestie e dei suoi uccelli prediletti, come egli li vedeva, grotteschi ma aureolati dell’amore di Dio. Il suo Fratello Lupo e Fratello Pecora sembravano allora quasi come il Compare Volpe e il Compare Coniglio di uno Zio Remo più cristiano. Sono giunto lentamente a scorgere molti altri aspetti meravigliosi di un tal uomo, ma non ho mai perduto quello. La sua figura sta su una sorta di ponte che collega la mia fanciullezza con la mia conversione a molte altre cose; poiché il romanzo della sua religione ha penetrato persino il razionalismo di quel vago tempo vittoriano. Nella misura in cui ho avuto questa esperienza, potrei essere in grado di condurre altri un poco più avanti lungo quella strada; ma solo un pochino più avanti. Nessuno sa meglio di me ora che è una strada su cui gli angeli potrebbero temere di posare il piede; ma benché io sia certo del fallimento non sono del tutto sopraffatto dalla paura; poiché egli sopportava volentieri gli sciocchi.
CHAPTER II
THE WORLD ST. FRANCIS FOUND
The modern innovation which has substituted journalism for history, or for that tradition that is the gossip of history, has had at least one definite effect. It has insured that everybody should only hear the end of every story. Journalists are in the habit of printing above the very last chapters of their serial stories (when the hero and the heroine are just about to embrace in the last chapter, as only an unfathomable perversity prevented them from doing so in the first) the rather misleading words, “You can only begin this story here.” But even this is not a complete parallel; for the journals do give some sort of a summary of the story, while they never give anything remotely resembling a summary of the history. Newspapers not only deal with news, but they deal with everything as if it were entirely new. It is exactly in the same fashion that we read that Admiral Bangs has been shot, which is the first intimation we have that he has ever been born.
There is something singularly significant in the use which journalism makes of its stores of biography. It never thinks of publishing the life until it is publishing the death. As it deals with individuals it deals with institutions and ideas. After the Great War our public began to be told of all sorts of nations being emancipated. It had never been told a word about their being enslaved. We were called upon to judge of the justice of settlements, when we had never been allowed to hear of the very existence of the quarrels. People would think it pedantic to talk about the Serbian epics and they prefer to talk about the Yugo-Slavonic international new diplomacy; and they are quite excited about something they call Czecho-Slovakia without apparently having ever heard about Bohemia. Things that are as old as Europe are regarded as more recent than the very latest claims pegged out on the prairies of America. It is very exciting; like the last act of a play to people who have only come into the theatre just before the curtain falls. But it does not conduce exactly to knowing what it is all about. To those content with the mere fact of a pistol-shot or a passionate embrace, such a leisurely manner of patronising the drama may be recommended. To those tormented by a mere intellectual curiosity about who is kissing or killing whom, it is unsatisfactory.
Most modern history, especially in England, suffers from the same imperfection as journalism. At best it only tells half the story of Christendom; and that the second half without the first half. Men for whom reason begins with the Reformation, can never give a complete account of anything, for they have to start with institutions whose origin they can never explain, or generally even imagine. Just as we hear of the admiral being shot but have never heard of his being born, so we all heard a great deal about the dissolution of the monasteries, but we heard next to nothing about the creation of the monasteries. Now this sort of history would be hopelessly insufficient, even for an intelligent man who hated the monasteries. It is hopelessly insufficient in connection with institutions that many intelligent men do in a quite healthy spirit hate. For instance, it is possible that some of us have occasionally seen some mention, by our learned leader-writers, of an obscure institution called the Spanish Inquisition. Well, it really is an obscure institution, according to them and the histories they read. It is obscure because its origin is obscure. Protestant history simply begins with the horrible thing in possession, as the pantomine begins with the demon king in the goblin kitchen. It is likely enough that it was, especially towards the end, a horrible thing that might be haunted by demons; but if we say this was so, we have no notion why it was so. To understand the Spanish Inquisition it would be necessary to discover two things that we have never dreamed of bothering about; what Spain was and what an Inquisition was. The former would bring in the whole great question about the Crusade against the Moors; and by what heroic chivalry a European nation freed itself of an alien domination from Africa. The latter would bring in the whole business of the other Crusade against the Albigensians, and why men loved and hated that nihilistic vision from Asia. Unless we understand that there was in these things originally the rush and romance of a Crusade, we cannot understand how they came to deceive men or drag them on towards evil. The Crusaders doubtless abused their victory, but there was a victory to abuse. And where there is victory there is valour in the field and popularity in the forum. There is some sort of enthusiasm that encourages excesses or covers faults. For instance, I for one have maintained from very early days the responsibility of the English for their atrocious treatment of the Irish. But it would be quite unfair to describe even the devilry of ‘98 and leave out altogether all mention of the war with Napoleon. It would be unjust to suggest that the English mind was bent on nothing but the death of Emmett, when it was more probably full of the glory of the death of Nelson. Unfortunately ‘98 was very far from being the last date of such dirty work; and only a few years ago our politicians started trying to rule by random robbing and killing, while gently remonstrating with the Irish for their memory of old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago. But however badly we may think of the Black-and tan business, it would be unjust to forget that most of us were not thinking of Black-and-Tan but of khaki; and that khaki had just then a noble and national connotation covering many things. To write of the war with Ireland and leave out the war against Prussia, and the English sincerity about it, would be unjust to the English. So to talk about the torture-engine as if it had been a hideous toy is unjust to the Spanish. It does not tell sensibly from the start the story of what the Spaniards did, and why. We may concede to our contempories that in any case it is not a story that ends well. We do not insist that in their version it should begin well. What we complain of is that in their version it does not begin at all. They are only in at the death; or even, like Lord Tom Noddy, to late for the hanging. It is quite true that it was more horrible than any hanging; but they only gather, so to speak, the very ashes of the ashes; the fag-end of the faggot.
CAPITOLO II
IL MONDO CHE SAN FRANCESCO TROVÒ
L’innovazione moderna che ha sostituito il giornalismo alla storia, o a quella tradizione che è il pettegolezzo della storia, ha avuto almeno un effetto preciso. Ha fatto sì che ognuno udisse soltanto la fine di ogni racconto. I giornalisti hanno l’abitudine di stampare, sopra gli ultimissimi capitoli dei loro romanzi a puntate (quando l’eroe e l’eroina stanno per abbracciarsi nell’ultimo capitolo, poiché soltanto un’imperscrutabile perversità impedì loro di farlo nel primo), le parole piuttosto fuorvianti: «Potete cominciare questa storia solo da qui». Ma neppure questo è un parallelo completo; poiché i giornali danno pur sempre una sorta di riassunto del racconto, mentre non danno mai nulla che somigli neppure lontanamente a un riassunto della storia. I giornali non trattano soltanto le notizie, ma trattano ogni cosa come se fosse interamente nuova. È esattamente allo stesso modo che leggiamo che l’ammiraglio Bangs è stato fucilato, il che è il primo indizio che abbiamo del fatto che egli sia mai nato.
C’è qualcosa di singolarmente significativo nell’uso che il giornalismo fa delle sue riserve di biografia. Non pensa mai a pubblicare la vita finché non pubblica la morte. Come tratta gli individui, così tratta le istituzioni e le idee. Dopo la Grande Guerra il nostro pubblico cominciò a sentirsi dire di ogni sorta di nazioni che venivano emancipate. Non gli era mai stata detta una parola sul fatto che fossero state asservite. Fummo chiamati a giudicare della giustizia degli accordi, quando non ci era mai stato permesso di udire della stessa esistenza delle contese. La gente riterrebbe pedante parlare delle epopee serbe e preferisce parlare della nuova diplomazia internazionale jugoslava; ed è tutta eccitata per qualcosa che chiama Cecoslovacchia senza, a quanto pare, aver mai sentito parlare della Boemia. Cose antiche quanto l’Europa sono considerate più recenti delle ultimissime rivendicazioni piantate nelle praterie d’America. È molto eccitante; come l’ultimo atto di un dramma per chi è entrato in teatro appena prima che cali il sipario. Ma non giova esattamente a capire di che cosa si tratti. A coloro che si accontentano del semplice fatto di un colpo di pistola o di un abbraccio appassionato, si può raccomandare tale modo indolente di degnarsi di seguire il dramma. A coloro che sono tormentati da una semplice curiosità intellettuale su chi baci o uccida chi, esso è insoddisfacente.
La maggior parte della storia moderna, specialmente in Inghilterra, soffre della stessa imperfezione del giornalismo. Nel migliore dei casi racconta solo metà della storia della Cristianità; e per giunta la seconda metà senza la prima. Gli uomini per i quali la ragione comincia con la Riforma non possono mai dare un resoconto completo di alcunché, poiché devono partire da istituzioni la cui origine non sanno mai spiegare, né in genere neppure immaginare. Proprio come sentiamo che l’ammiraglio è stato fucilato ma non abbiamo mai sentito che sia nato, così tutti udimmo molto sulla soppressione dei monasteri, ma non udimmo quasi nulla sulla creazione dei monasteri. Ora, questa sorta di storia sarebbe irrimediabilmente insufficiente perfino per un uomo intelligente che odiasse i monasteri. È irrimediabilmente insufficiente in rapporto a istituzioni che molti uomini intelligenti, con spirito del tutto sano, effettivamente odiano. Per esempio, è possibile che qualcuno di noi abbia occasionalmente visto qualche accenno, da parte dei nostri dotti editorialisti, a un’oscura istituzione chiamata Inquisizione spagnola. Ebbene, è davvero un’istituzione oscura, secondo loro e le storie che leggono. È oscura perché la sua origine è oscura. La storia protestante comincia semplicemente con la cosa orribile già in possesso, come la pantomima comincia con il re demonio nella cucina dei folletti. È abbastanza probabile che fosse, specialmente verso la fine, una cosa orribile che poteva essere infestata da demoni; ma se diciamo che fu così, non abbiamo idea del perché fosse così. Per comprendere l’Inquisizione spagnola sarebbe necessario scoprire due cose di cui non abbiamo mai sognato di curarci: che cosa fosse la Spagna e che cosa fosse un’Inquisizione. La prima porterebbe in gioco tutta la grande questione della Crociata contro i Mori; e per quale eroica cavalleria una nazione europea si liberò di un dominio straniero venuto dall’Africa. La seconda porterebbe in gioco tutta la faccenda dell’altra Crociata contro gli Albigesi, e perché gli uomini amarono e odiarono quella nichilistica visione venuta dall’Asia. Se non comprendiamo che in queste cose vi fu in origine lo slancio e il romanzo di una Crociata, non possiamo comprendere come giunsero a ingannare gli uomini o a trascinarli verso il male. I Crociati abusarono senza dubbio della loro vittoria, ma c’era una vittoria di cui abusare. E dove c’è vittoria c’è valore sul campo e popolarità nel foro. C’è una sorta di entusiasmo che incoraggia gli eccessi o copre le colpe. Per esempio, io per primo ho sostenuto fin dai primissimi tempi la responsabilità degli inglesi per il loro atroce trattamento degli irlandesi. Ma sarebbe del tutto ingiusto descrivere anche la diavoleria del ‘98 e tralasciare del tutto ogni menzione della guerra con Napoleone. Sarebbe ingiusto insinuare che la mente inglese fosse tesa a null’altro che alla morte di Emmett, quando era più probabilmente colma della gloria della morte di Nelson. Purtroppo il ‘98 fu ben lungi dall’essere l’ultima data di simili lavori sporchi; e solo pochi anni fa i nostri politici cominciarono a tentare di governare rapinando e uccidendo a casaccio, mentre rimproveravano garbatamente gli irlandesi per la loro memoria di antiche infelici cose lontane e di battaglie di tanto tempo fa. Ma per quanto male possiamo pensare della faccenda dei Black-and-Tan, sarebbe ingiusto dimenticare che la maggior parte di noi non pensava ai Black-and-Tan ma al kaki; e che il kaki aveva allora una nobile e nazionale connotazione che copriva molte cose. Scrivere della guerra con l’Irlanda e tralasciare la guerra contro la Prussia, e la sincerità inglese al riguardo, sarebbe ingiusto verso gli inglesi. Così parlare della macchina di tortura come se fosse stata un orrendo giocattolo è ingiusto verso gli spagnoli. Non racconta assennatamente fin dal principio la storia di ciò che gli spagnoli fecero, e perché. Possiamo concedere ai nostri contemporanei che in ogni caso non è una storia che finisce bene. Non pretendiamo che nella loro versione debba cominciare bene. Ciò di cui ci lamentiamo è che nella loro versione essa non comincia affatto. Sono presenti solo alla morte; o addirittura, come Lord Tom Noddy, troppo tardi per l’impiccagione. È verissimo che fu più orribile di qualsiasi impiccagione; ma essi raccolgono, per così dire, soltanto le ceneri delle ceneri; il mozzicone della fascina.
The case of the Inquisition is here taken at random, for it is one among any number illustrating the same thing; and not because it is especially connected with St. Francis, in whatever sense it may have been connected with St Dominic. It may well be suggested later indeed that St. Francis is unintelligible, just as St. Dominic is unintelligible, unless we do understand something of what the thirteenth century meant by heresy and a crusade. But for the moment I use it as a lesser example for a much larger purpose. It is to point out that to begin the story of St. Francis with the birth of St Francis would be to miss the whole point of the story, or rather not to tell the story at all. And it is to suggest that the modern tail-foremost type of journalistic history perpetually fails us. We learn about reformers without knowing what they had to reform, about rebels without knowing what they rebelled against, of memorials that are not connected with any memory and restorations of things that apparently never existed before. Even at the expense of this chapter appearing disproportionate, it is necessary to say something about the great movements that led up to the entrance of the founder of the Franciscans. It may seem to mean describing a world, or even a universe to describe a man. It will inevitably mean that the world or the universe will be described with a few desperate generalisations in a few abrupt sentences. But so far from its meaning that we shall see a very small figure under so large a sky, it will mean that we must measure the sky before we can begin to measure the towering stature of the man.
And this phrase alone brings me to the preliminary suggestions that seem necessary before even a slight sketch of the life of St. Francis. It is necessary to realise, in however rude and elementary a fashion, into what sort of a world St. Francis entered and what had been the history of that world, at least in so far as it affected him. It is necessary to have, if only in a few sentences, a sort of preface in the form of an Outline of History, if we may borrow the phrase of Mr. Wells. in the case of Mr. Wells himself, it is evident that the distinguished novelist suffered the same disadvantage as if he had been obliged to write a novel of which he hated the hero. To write history and hate Rome, both pagan and papal, is to hate everything that has happened. It comes very nearly to hating humanity on purely humanitarian grounds. To dislike both the priest and the soldier, both the laurels of the warrior and the lilies of the saint, is to suffer a division from the mass of mankind for which not all the dexterities of the finest and most flexible of modern intelligences can compensate. A much wider sympathy is needed for the historical setting of St. Francis, himself both a soldier and a saint. I will therefore conclude this chapter with a few generalisations about the world St. Francis found.
Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds. As a matter of individual belief, I should of course express it by saying they are not sufficiently catholic to be Catholic. But I am not going to discuss here the doctrinal truths of Christianity, but simply the broad historical fact of Christianity, as it might appear to a really enlightened and imaginative person even if he were not a Christian. What I mean at the moment is that the majority of doubts are made out of details. In the course of random reading a man comes across a pagan custom that strikes him as picturesque or a Christian action that strikes him as cruel; but he does not enlarge his mind sufficiently to see the main truth about pagan custom or the Christian reaction against it. Until we understand, not necessarily in detail, but in their big bulk and proportion that pagan progress and that Christian reaction, we cannot really understand the point of history at which St. Francis appears or what his great popular mission was all about.
Now everybody knows, I imagine, that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were an awakening of the world. They were a fresh flowering of culture and the creative arts after a long spell of much sterner and even more sterile experience which we call the Dark Ages. They may be called an emancipation; they were certainly an end; an end of what may at least seem a harsher and more inhuman time. But what was it that was ended? From what was it that men were emancipated? That is where there is a real collision and point at issue between the different philosophies of history. On the merely external and secular side, it has been truly said that men awoke from a sleep; but there had been dreams in that sleep of a mystical and sometimes of a monstrous kind. In that rationalistic routine into which most modern historians have fallen, it is considered enough to say that they were emancipated from mere savage superstition and advanced towards mere civilised enlightenment. Now this is the big blunder that stands as a stumbling-block at the very beginning of our story. Anybody who supposes that the Dark Ages were plain darkness and nothing else, and that the dawn of the thirteenth century was plain daylight and nothing else, will not be able to make head or tail of the human story of St. Francis of Assisi. The truth is that the joy of St. Francis and his Jongleurs de Dieu was not merely an awakening. It was something which cannot be understood without understanding their own mystical creed. The end of the Dark Ages was not merely the end of a sleep. It was certainly not merely the end of a superstitious enslavement. It was the end of something belonging to a quite definite but quite different order of ideas.
It was the end of a penance; or, if it be preferred, a purgation. It marked the moment when a certain spiritual expiation had been finally worked out and certain spiritual diseases had been finally expelled from the system. They had been expelled by an era of asceticism, which was the only thing that could have expelled them. Christianity had entered the world to cure the world; and she cured it in the only way in which it could be cured. Viewed merely in an external and experimental fashion, the whole of the high civilisation of antiquity had ended in the learning of a certain lesson; that is, in its conversion to Christianity. But that lesson was a psychological fact as well as a theological faith. That pagan civilization had indeed been a very high civilisation. It would not weaken our thesis, it might even strengthen it, to say that it was the highest that humanity ever reached. It had discovered its still unrivalled arts of poetry and plastic representation; it had discovered its own permanent political ideals; it had discovered its own clear system of logic and language. But above all, it had discovered its own mistake. That mistake was too deep to be ideally defined; the short-hand of it is to call it the mistake of nature-worship. It might almost as truly be called the mistake of being natural; and it was a very natural mistake. The Greeks, the great guides and pioneers of pagan antiquity, started out with the idea of something splendidly obvious and direct; the idea that if a man walked straight ahead on the high road of reason and nature, he would come to no harm; especially if he was, as the Greek was, eminently enlightened and intelligent. We might be so flippant as to say that man was simply to follow his nose, so long as it was a Greek nose. And the case of the Greeks themselves is alone enough to illustrate the strange but certain fatality that attends upon this fallacy. No sooner did the Greeks themselves begin to follow their own noses and their own notion of being natural, than the queerest thing in history seems to have happened to them. It was much too queer to be an easy matter to discuss. It may be remarked that our more repulsive realists never give us the benefit of their realism. Their studies of unsavoury subjects never take note of the testimony they bear to the truths of traditional morality. But if we had the taste for such things, we could cite thousands of such things as part of the case for Christian morals. And an instance of this is found in the fact that nobody has written, in this sense, a real moral history of the Greeks. Nobody has seen the scale or the strangeness of the story. The wisest men in the world set out to be natural; and the most unnatural thing in the world was the very first thing they did. The immediate effect of saluting the sun and the sunny sanity of nature was a perversion spreading like a pestilence. The greatest and even the purest philosophers could not apparently avoid this low sort of lunacy. Why? It would seem simple enough for the people whose poets had conceived Helen of Troy, whose sculptors had carved the Venus of Milo, to remain healthy on the point. The truth is people who worship health cannot remain healthy on the point. When Man goes straight he goes crooked. When he follows his nose he manages somehow to put his nose out of joint, or even to cut off his nose to spite his face; and that in accordance with something much deeper in human nature than nature-worshippers could ever understand. It was the discovery of that deeper thing, humanly speaking, that constituted the conversion to Christianity. There is a bias in a man like the bias on a bowl; and Christianity was the discovery of how to correct the bias and therefore hit the mark. There are many who will smile at the saying; but it is profoundly true to say that the glad good news brought by the Gospel was the news of original sin.
Il caso dell’Inquisizione è qui preso a caso, giacché è uno fra innumerevoli altri che illustrano la stessa cosa; e non perché sia particolarmente legato a san Francesco, in qualunque senso possa essere stato legato a san Domenico. Anzi, si potrà bene suggerire più avanti che san Francesco è inintelligibile, così come è inintelligibile san Domenico, se non comprendiamo qualcosa di ciò che il tredicesimo secolo intendeva per eresia e crociata. Ma per il momento me ne servo come di un esempio minore per uno scopo assai più grande. Serve a mostrare che cominciare la storia di san Francesco con la nascita di san Francesco significherebbe mancare tutto il senso della storia, o piuttosto non raccontarla affatto. E serve a suggerire che il moderno tipo di storia giornalistica, che procede a ritroso, ci tradisce di continuo. Apprendiamo dei riformatori senza sapere che cosa avessero da riformare, dei ribelli senza sapere contro che cosa si ribellassero, di memoriali che non sono legati ad alcuna memoria e di restaurazioni di cose che a quanto pare non erano mai esistite prima. Anche a costo che questo capitolo appaia sproporzionato, è necessario dire qualcosa dei grandi movimenti che condussero all’ingresso del fondatore dei francescani. Può sembrare che ciò significhi descrivere un mondo, o addirittura un universo, per descrivere un uomo. Significherà inevitabilmente che il mondo o l’universo verranno descritti con poche disperate generalizzazioni in poche frasi brusche. Ma lungi dal significare che vedremo una figura piccolissima sotto un cielo così vasto, significherà che dobbiamo misurare il cielo prima di poter cominciare a misurare la statura torreggiante dell’uomo.
E questa frase da sola mi conduce ai suggerimenti preliminari che paiono necessari prima ancora di un pur breve schizzo della vita di san Francesco. È necessario rendersi conto, per quanto in modo rozzo ed elementare, in che sorta di mondo entrò san Francesco e quale fosse stata la storia di quel mondo, almeno in quanto lo riguardò. È necessario avere, non fosse che in poche frasi, una specie di prefazione in forma di Profilo di Storia, se ci è lecito prendere in prestito l’espressione del signor Wells. Nel caso dello stesso signor Wells, è evidente che l’illustre romanziere soffrì lo stesso svantaggio che se fosse stato costretto a scrivere un romanzo di cui odiava l’eroe. Scrivere storia e odiare Roma, tanto pagana quanto papale, è odiare tutto ciò che è accaduto. Equivale quasi a odiare l’umanità per motivi puramente umanitari. Detestare tanto il prete quanto il soldato, tanto gli allori del guerriero quanto i gigli del santo, è patire una separazione dalla massa dell’umanità che non tutte le abilità della più fine e più flessibile delle intelligenze moderne possono compensare. Occorre una simpatia assai più ampia per la cornice storica di san Francesco, egli stesso al tempo stesso soldato e santo. Concluderò dunque questo capitolo con qualche generalizzazione sul mondo che san Francesco trovò.
Gli uomini non vogliono credere perché non vogliono allargare la mente. Quanto alla convinzione individuale, dovrei naturalmente esprimerla dicendo che non sono abbastanza cattolici, nel senso universale, per essere Cattolici. Ma non intendo qui discutere le verità dottrinali del Cristianesimo, bensì semplicemente l’ampio fatto storico del Cristianesimo, quale potrebbe apparire a una persona davvero illuminata e dotata d’immaginazione anche se non fosse cristiana. Ciò che intendo per ora è che la maggior parte dei dubbi è fatta di dettagli. Nel corso di letture casuali un uomo s’imbatte in un costume pagano che gli pare pittoresco o in un’azione cristiana che gli pare crudele; ma non allarga la mente abbastanza da scorgere la verità essenziale intorno al costume pagano o alla reazione cristiana contro di esso. Finché non comprendiamo, non necessariamente nei particolari, ma nella loro grande mole e proporzione, quel progresso pagano e quella reazione cristiana, non possiamo davvero comprendere il punto della storia in cui appare san Francesco né quale fosse il senso della sua grande missione popolare.
Ora tutti sanno, immagino, che il dodicesimo e il tredicesimo secolo furono un risveglio del mondo. Furono una fresca fioritura della cultura e delle arti creatrici dopo un lungo periodo di un’esperienza assai più aspra e persino più sterile che chiamiamo i Secoli Bui. Possono essere chiamati un’emancipazione; furono certamente una fine; la fine di ciò che almeno può sembrare un tempo più duro e più disumano. Ma che cosa fu che ebbe fine? Da che cosa furono emancipati gli uomini? È qui che vi è una vera collisione e un punto di contesa tra le diverse filosofie della storia. Sul piano meramente esteriore e secolare, si è detto con verità che gli uomini si destarono da un sonno; ma in quel sonno vi erano stati sogni di specie mistica e talvolta mostruosa. In quella routine razionalistica in cui è caduta la maggior parte degli storici moderni, si ritiene sufficiente dire che furono emancipati da una mera selvaggia superstizione e avanzarono verso un mero illuminismo civilizzato. Ora questo è il grande abbaglio che si erge come pietra d’inciampo proprio all’inizio della nostra storia. Chiunque supponga che i Secoli Bui fossero pura tenebra e nient’altro, e che l’alba del tredicesimo secolo fosse pura luce del giorno e nient’altro, non riuscirà a raccapezzarsi nella vicenda umana di san Francesco d’Assisi. La verità è che la gioia di san Francesco e dei suoi Jongleurs de Dieu non fu semplicemente un risveglio. Fu qualcosa che non si può comprendere senza comprendere il loro stesso credo mistico. La fine dei Secoli Bui non fu semplicemente la fine di un sonno. Non fu certamente soltanto la fine di un asservimento superstizioso. Fu la fine di qualcosa che apparteneva a un ordine di idee ben preciso ma del tutto diverso.
Fu la fine di una penitenza; o, se si preferisce, di una purificazione. Segnò il momento in cui una certa espiazione spirituale era stata finalmente compiuta e certe malattie spirituali erano state finalmente espulse dall’organismo. Erano state espulse da un’era di ascetismo, che era l’unica cosa che avrebbe potuto espellerle. Il Cristianesimo era entrato nel mondo per guarire il mondo; e lo guarì nell’unico modo in cui poteva essere guarito. Considerata in modo meramente esteriore e sperimentale, tutta l’alta civiltà dell’antichità si era conclusa nell’apprendimento di una certa lezione; cioè nella sua conversione al Cristianesimo. Ma quella lezione era un fatto psicologico oltre che una fede teologica. Quella civiltà pagana era stata davvero una civiltà assai alta. Non indebolirebbe la nostra tesi, potrebbe anzi rafforzarla, dire che fu la più alta che l’umanità abbia mai raggiunto. Aveva scoperto le sue arti ancora insuperate di poesia e di rappresentazione plastica; aveva scoperto i propri ideali politici duraturi; aveva scoperto il proprio limpido sistema di logica e di linguaggio. Ma soprattutto aveva scoperto il proprio errore. Quell’errore era troppo profondo per essere definito idealmente; in breve lo si può chiamare l’errore del culto della natura. Si potrebbe quasi altrettanto veracemente chiamarlo l’errore dell’essere naturale; ed era un errore molto naturale. I Greci, i grandi maestri e pionieri dell’antichità pagana, partirono dall’idea di qualcosa di splendidamente ovvio e diretto; l’idea che se un uomo cammina dritto innanzi sull’alta strada della ragione e della natura, non gli accadrà alcun male; specialmente se è, come lo era il Greco, eminentemente illuminato e intelligente. Potremmo essere così frivoli da dire che l’uomo doveva semplicemente seguire il proprio naso, purché fosse un naso greco. E il caso degli stessi Greci da solo basta a illustrare la strana ma certa fatalità che accompagna questa fallacia. Non appena i Greci stessi cominciarono a seguire il proprio naso e la propria nozione dell’essere naturali, ecco che la cosa più bizzarra della storia sembra essere loro accaduta. Era troppo bizzarra perché sia facile discuterne. Si può osservare che i nostri realisti più ripugnanti non ci concedono mai il beneficio del loro realismo. I loro studi di soggetti sgradevoli non prendono mai nota della testimonianza che essi recano alle verità della morale tradizionale. Ma se avessimo il gusto di simili cose, potremmo citarne a migliaia come parte del capo d’accusa a favore della morale cristiana. E un esempio di ciò si trova nel fatto che nessuno ha scritto, in questo senso, una vera storia morale dei Greci. Nessuno ha visto la portata o la stranezza della vicenda. Gli uomini più saggi del mondo si proposero di essere naturali; e la cosa più innaturale del mondo fu la primissima cosa che fecero. L’effetto immediato del salutare il sole e la solare sanità della natura fu una perversione che si diffuse come una pestilenza. I più grandi e persino i più puri filosofi non poterono a quanto pare evitare questa bassa specie di follia. Perché? Sembrerebbe abbastanza semplice, per il popolo i cui poeti avevano concepito Elena di Troia, i cui scultori avevano scolpito la Venere di Milo, rimanere sani su questo punto. La verità è che chi adora la salute non può rimanere sano su questo punto. Quando l’Uomo va dritto va storto. Quando segue il proprio naso riesce in qualche modo a slogarselo, o persino a tagliarsi il naso per far dispetto alla faccia; e ciò in conformità con qualcosa di assai più profondo nella natura umana di quanto gli adoratori della natura potessero mai comprendere. Fu la scoperta di quella cosa più profonda, umanamente parlando, che costituì la conversione al Cristianesimo. C’è in un uomo una piega, come la piega in una boccia; e il Cristianesimo fu la scoperta di come correggere la piega e perciò colpire il bersaglio. Molti sorrideranno a questa affermazione; ma è profondamente vero dire che la lieta buona novella recata dal Vangelo fu la notizia del peccato originale.
Rome rose at the expense of her Greek teachers largely because she did not entirely consent to be taught these tricks. She had a much more decent tradition; but she ultimately suffered from the same fallacy in her religious tradition; which was necessarily in no small degree the heathen tradition of nature worship. What was the matter with the whole heathen civilisation was that there nothing for the mass of men in the way of mysticism, except that concerned with the mystery of the nameless forces of nature, such as sex and growth and death. In the Roman Empire also, long before the end, we find nature-worship inevitably producing things that are against nature. Cases like that of Nero have passed into a proverb when Sadism sat on a throne brazen in the broad daylight. But the truth I mean is something much more subtle and universal than a conventional catalogue of atrocities. What had happened to the human imagination, as a whole, was that the whole world was coloured by dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions; by natural passions becoming unnatural passions. Thus the effect of treating sex as only one innocent natural thing was that every other innocent natural thing became soaked and sodden with sex. For sex cannot be admitted to a mere equality among elementary emotions or experiences like eating and sleeping. The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant. There is something dangerous and disproportionate in its place in human nature, for whatever reason; and it does really need a special purification and dedication. The modern talk about sex being free like any other sense, about the body being beautiful like any tree or flower, is either a description of the Garden of Eden or a piece of thoroughly bad psychology, of which the world grew weary two thousand years ago.
This is not to be confused with mere self-righteous sensationalism about the wickedness of the pagan world. It was not so much that the pagan world was wicked as that it was good enough to realise that its paganism was becoming wicked, or rather it was on the logical high road to wickedness. I mean that there was no future for “natural magic”; to deepen it was only to darken it into black magic. There was no future for it; because in the past it had only been innocent because it was young. We might say it had only been innocent because it was shallow. Pagans were wiser that paganism; that is why the pagans became Christians. Thousands of them had philosophy and family virtues and military honour to hold them up; but by this time the purely popular thing called religion was certainly dragging them down. When this reaction against the evil is allowed for, it is true to repeat that it was an evil that was everywhere. In another and more literal sense its name was Pan.
It was no metaphor to say that these people needed a new heaven and a new earth; for they had really defiled their own earth and even their own heaven. How could their case be met by looking at the sky, when erotic legends were scrawled in stars across it; how could they learn anything from the love of birds and flowers after the sort of love stories that were told of them? It is impossible here to multiply evidences, and one small example may stand for the rest. We know what sort of sentimental associations are called up to us by the phrase “a garden”; and how we think mostly of the memory of melancholy and innocent romances, or quite as often of some gracious maiden lady or kindly old person pottering under a yew hedge, perhaps in sight of a village spire. Then, let anyone who knows a little Latin poetry recall suddenly what would have once stood in place of the sun-dial or the fountain, obscene and monstrous in the sun; and of what sort was the god of their gardens.
Nothing could purge this obsession but a religion that was literally unearthly. It was no good telling such people to have a natural religion full of stars and flowers; there was not a flower or even a star that had not been stained. They had to go into the desert where they could find no flowers or even into the cavern where they could see no stars. Into that desert and that cavern the highest human intellect entered for some four centuries; and it was the very wisest thing it could do. Nothing but the stark supernatural stood up for its salvation; if God could not save it, certainly the gods could not. The early Church called the gods of paganism devils; and the Early Church was perfectly right. Whatever natural religion may have had to do with their beginnings, nothing but fiends now inhabited those hollow shrines. Pan was nothing but panic. Venus was nothing but venereal vice. I do not mean for a moment, of course, that all the individual pagans were of this character even to the end; but it was as individuals that they differed from it. Nothing distinguishes paganism from Christianity so clearly as the fact that the individual thing called philosophy had little or nothing to do with the social thing called religion. Anyhow it was no good to preach natural religion to people to whom nature had grown as unnatural as any religion. They knew much better than we do what was the matter with them and what sort of demons at once tempted and tormented them; and they wrote across that great space of history the text; “This sort goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
Now the historical importance of St. Francis and the transition from the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries, lies in the fact that they marked the end of this expiation. Men at the close of the dark Ages may have been rude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen tribes, more barbarous than themselves, but they were clean. They were like children; the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the clean pleasure of children. We have to conceive them in Europe as a whole living under little local governments, feudal in so far as they were a survival of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and carrying a far more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial as far as Rome still ruled as a great legend. But in Italy something had survived more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity; the republic, Italy, was dotted with little states, largely democratic in their ideals, and often filled with real citizens. But the city no longer lay open as under the Roman peace, but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war and all the citizens had to be soldiers. One of these stood in a steep and striking position on the wooded hills of Umbria; and its name was Assisi. Out of its deep gate under its high turrets was to come the message that was the gospel of the hour, “Your warfare is accomplished, your iniquity is pardoned.” But it was out of all these fragmentary things of feudalism and freedom and remains of Roman Law that there were to rise, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, vast and almost universal, the mighty civilisation of the Middle Ages.
Roma si levò a spese dei suoi maestri greci in gran parte perché non acconsentì interamente a farsi insegnare questi trucchi. Aveva una tradizione assai più decorosa; ma alla fine soffrì della medesima fallacia nella propria tradizione religiosa; la quale era necessariamente, in non piccola misura, la tradizione pagana del culto della natura. Ciò che non andava in tutta la civiltà pagana era che per la massa degli uomini non vi era nulla in fatto di misticismo, se non quello che riguardava il mistero delle innominate forze della natura, come il sesso, la crescita e la morte. Anche nell’Impero romano, molto prima della fine, troviamo il culto della natura produrre inevitabilmente cose che sono contro natura. Casi come quello di Nerone sono passati in proverbio, quando il Sadismo sedette su un trono sfacciato nella piena luce del giorno. Ma la verità che intendo è qualcosa di assai più sottile e universale di un convenzionale catalogo di atrocità. Ciò che era accaduto all’immaginazione umana, nel suo complesso, era che il mondo intero era colorato da passioni pericolose e rapidamente degeneranti; da passioni naturali che divenivano passioni innaturali. Così l’effetto del trattare il sesso come una sola cosa naturale e innocente fu che ogni altra cosa naturale e innocente rimase impregnata e fradicia di sesso. Poiché il sesso non può essere ammesso a una mera parità fra le emozioni o esperienze elementari come il mangiare e il dormire. Nel momento in cui il sesso cessa di essere un servo diviene un tiranno. Vi è qualcosa di pericoloso e sproporzionato nel suo posto nella natura umana, per qualunque ragione; ed esso ha davvero bisogno di una speciale purificazione e consacrazione. Il discorso moderno sul sesso libero come ogni altro senso, sul corpo bello come un albero o un fiore qualsiasi, è o una descrizione del Giardino dell’Eden o un pezzo di pessima psicologia, di cui il mondo si stancò duemila anni fa.
Ciò non va confuso con un mero sensazionalismo compiaciuto di sé intorno alla malvagità del mondo pagano. Non tanto il mondo pagano era malvagio, quanto era abbastanza buono da rendersi conto che il suo paganesimo stava divenendo malvagio, o piuttosto che era sull’alta strada logica verso la malvagità. Voglio dire che non vi era avvenire per la “magia naturale”; approfondirla non faceva che oscurarla in magia nera. Non vi era avvenire per essa; perché in passato era stata innocente soltanto perché era giovane. Potremmo dire che era stata innocente soltanto perché era superficiale. I pagani erano più saggi del paganesimo; ecco perché i pagani divennero cristiani. Migliaia di loro avevano la filosofia, le virtù familiari e l’onore militare a sorreggerli; ma a questo tempo la cosa puramente popolare chiamata religione li stava certamente trascinando in basso. Tenuto conto di questa reazione contro il male, è vero ripetere che era un male che era dovunque. In un altro senso, più letterale, il suo nome era Pan.
Non era una metafora dire che questa gente aveva bisogno di un nuovo cielo e di una nuova terra; poiché avevano davvero contaminato la propria terra e persino il proprio cielo. Come poteva il loro caso trovar rimedio guardando il cielo, quando leggende erotiche vi erano scarabocchiate a lettere di stelle; come potevano imparare qualcosa dall’amore degli uccelli e dei fiori dopo il genere di storie d’amore che si narravano di loro? È impossibile qui moltiplicare le prove, e un piccolo esempio può valere per tutti gli altri. Sappiamo quale sorta di associazioni sentimentali evoca in noi l’espressione “un giardino”; e come pensiamo per lo più al ricordo di malinconici e innocenti idilli, o altrettanto spesso a qualche graziosa signorina o a qualche gentile vecchietto che si affaccenda sotto una siepe di tasso, magari in vista del campanile di un villaggio. Allora, chiunque conosca un poco di poesia latina rammenti d’un tratto ciò che un tempo si sarebbe eretto al posto della meridiana o della fontana, osceno e mostruoso al sole; e quale fosse il dio dei loro giardini.
Nulla poteva purgare questa ossessione se non una religione che fosse letteralmente ultraterrena. Era inutile dire a simile gente di avere una religione naturale piena di stelle e di fiori; non v’era fiore né pure una stella che non fosse stato macchiato. Dovettero andare nel deserto dove non potevano trovare fiori, o persino nella caverna dove non potevano vedere stelle. In quel deserto e in quella caverna il più alto intelletto umano entrò per circa quattro secoli; e fu la cosa più saggia che potesse fare. Nulla se non il puro soprannaturale si levò a sua salvezza; se Dio non poteva salvarlo, certo gli dèi non potevano. La Chiesa primitiva chiamava diavoli gli dèi del paganesimo; e la Chiesa primitiva aveva perfettamente ragione. Qualunque cosa la religione naturale possa aver avuto a che fare con le loro origini, ormai nient’altro che demoni abitavano quei sacrari vuoti. Pan non era altro che panico. Venere non era altro che vizio venereo. Non intendo dire, s’intende, neppure per un istante, che tutti i singoli pagani fossero di questo carattere fino alla fine; ma era in quanto individui che se ne distinguevano. Nulla distingue il paganesimo dal Cristianesimo così chiaramente quanto il fatto che la cosa individuale chiamata filosofia avesse poco o nulla a che fare con la cosa sociale chiamata religione. Comunque era inutile predicare la religione naturale a gente per la quale la natura era divenuta innaturale quanto qualunque religione. Sapevano assai meglio di noi che cosa non andava in loro e quale sorta di demoni al tempo stesso li tentava e li tormentava; e scrissero attraverso quel grande spazio della storia il testo: «Questa specie non esce se non con la preghiera e il digiuno».
Ora l’importanza storica di san Francesco e della transizione dal dodicesimo al tredicesimo secolo sta nel fatto che essi segnarono la fine di questa espiazione. Gli uomini al declinare dei Secoli Bui potevano essere rozzi, illetterati e ignoranti in tutto tranne che nelle guerre con le tribù pagane, più barbare di loro, ma erano puri. Erano come fanciulli; i primi inizi delle loro rozze arti hanno tutto il puro piacere dei fanciulli. Dobbiamo concepirli, in Europa nel suo insieme, viventi sotto piccoli governi locali, feudali in quanto erano un residuo di feroci guerre con i barbari, spesso monastici e recanti un carattere assai più amichevole e paterno, ancora debolmente imperiali in quanto Roma regnava ancora come una grande leggenda. Ma in Italia qualcosa era sopravvissuto di più tipico dello spirito più fine dell’antichità; la repubblica: l’Italia era costellata di piccoli stati, in gran parte democratici nei loro ideali, e spesso pieni di veri cittadini. Ma la città non giaceva più aperta come sotto la pace romana, bensì era rinchiusa entro alte mura a difesa contro la guerra feudale, e tutti i cittadini dovevano essere soldati. Una di queste sorgeva in una posizione ripida e suggestiva sui colli boscosi dell’Umbria; e il suo nome era Assisi. Dalla sua profonda porta, sotto le sue alte torri, doveva venire il messaggio che era il vangelo dell’ora: «La tua milizia è compiuta, la tua iniquità è perdonata». Ma fu da tutte queste cose frammentarie del feudalesimo, della libertà e dei resti del Diritto romano che dovevano sorgere, all’inizio del tredicesimo secolo, vasta e quasi universale, la possente civiltà del Medioevo.
It is an exaggeration to attribute it entirely to the inspiration of any one man, even the most original genius of the thirteenth century. Its elementary ethics of fraternity and fair play had never been entirely extinct and Christendom had never been anything less than Christian. The great truisms about justice and pity can be found in the rudest monastic records of the barbaric transition or the stiffest maxims of the Byzantine decline. And early in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a larger moral movement had clearly begun, but what may fairly be said of it is this, that over all those first movements there was still something of that ancient austerity that came from the long penitentiary period. It was the twilight of the morning; but it was still a grey twilight. This may be illustrated by the mere mention of two or three of these reforms before the Franciscan reform. The monastic institution itself, of course, was far older than all these things; indeed it was undoubtedly almost as old as Christianity. Its counsels of perfection had always taken the form of vows of chastity and poverty and obedience. With these unworldly aims it had long ago civilised a great part of the world. The monks had taught people to plough and sow as well as to read and write; indeed they had taught the people nearly everything the people knew. But it may truly be said that the monks were severely practical, in the sense that they not only practical but also severe; though they were generally severe with themselves and practical for other people. All this early monastic movement had long ago settled down and doubtless often deteriorated; but when we come to the first medieval movements this sterner character is still apparent. Three examples may be taken to illustrate the point.
First, the ancient social mould of slavery was already beginning to melt. Not only was the slave turning into a serf, who was practically free as regards his own farm and family life, but many lords were freeing slaves and serfs altogether. This was done under the pressure of the priests; but especially it was done in the spirit of a penance. In one sense, of course, any Catholic society must have an atmosphere of penance; but I am speaking of that sterner spirit of penance which had expiated the excesses of paganism. There was about such restitutions the atmosphere of the death-bed; as many of them were doubtless were examples of death-bed repentance. A very honest atheist with whom I once debated made use of the expression, “Men have only been kept in slavery by the fear of hell.” As I pointed out to him, if he had said that men had only been freed from slavery by the fear of hell, he would have at least have been referring to an unquestionable historical fact.
Another example was the sweeping reform of Church discipline by Pope Gregory the Seventh. It really was a reform, undertaken from the highest motives and having the healthiest results; it conducted a searching inquisition against simony or the financial corruption of the clergy; it insisted on a more serious and self-sacrificing ideal for the life of the parish priest. But the very fact that this largely took the form of making universal the obligation of celibacy will strike the note of something which, however noble, would seem to many to be vaguely negative. The third example is in one sense the strongest of all. For the third example was a war; a heroic war and for many of us a holy war; but still having all the stark and terrible responsibilities of war. There is no space here to say all that should be said about the true nature of the Crusades. Everybody knows that in the very darkest hour of the Dark Ages a sort of heresy had sprung up in Arabia and become a new religion of a military but nomadic sort; invoking the name of Mahomet. Intrinsically it had a character found in many heresies from the Moslem to the Monist. It seemed to the heretic a sane simplification of religion; while it seems to a Catholic an insane simplification of religion, because it simplifies all to a single idea and so loses the breadth and balance of Catholicism. Anyhow its objective character was that of a military danger to Christendom and Christendom had struck at the very heart of it, in seeking to reconquer the Holy Places. The great Duke Godfrey and the first Christians who stormed Jerusalem were heroes if there were any in the world; but they were the heroes of a tragedy.
Now I have taken these two or three examples of the earlier medieval movements in order to note about them one general character, which refers back to the penance that followed paganism. There is something in all these movements that is bracing even while it is still bleak, like a wind blowing between the clefts of the mountains. That wind, austere and pure, of which the poet speaks, is really the spirit of the time, for it is the wind of a world that has at last been purified. To anyone who can appreciate atmospheres there is something clear and clean about the atmosphere of this crude and often harsh society. Its very lusts are clean; for they no have longer any smell of perversion. Its very cruelties are clean; they are not the luxurious cruelties of the amphitheatre. They come either of a very simple horror at blasphemy or a very simple fury at an insult. Gradually against this grey background beauty begins to appear, as something really fresh and delicate and above all surprising. Love returning is no longer what was once called platonic but what is still called chivalric love. The flowers and stars are have recovered their first innocence. Fire and water are felt to be worthy to be the brother and sister of a saint. The purge of paganism is complete at last.
For water itself has been washed. Fire itself has been purified as by fire. Water is no longer the water into which slaves were flung to feed the fishes. Fire is no longer that fire through which children were passed to Moloch. Flowers smell no more of the forgotten garlands gathered in the garden of Priapus; stars stand no more as signs of the far frigidity of gods as cold as those cold fires. They are like all new things newly made and awaiting new names, from one who shall come to name them. Neither the universe nor the earth have now any longer the old sinister significance of the world. They await a new reconciliation with man, but they are already capable of being reconciled. Man has stripped from his soul the last rag of nature worship, and can return to nature.
While it was yet twilight a figure appeared silently and suddenly on a little hill above the city, dark against the fading darkness. For it was the end of a long and stern night, a night of vigil, not unvisited by stars. He stood with his hands lifted, as in so many statues and pictures, and about him was a burst of birds singing; and behind him was the break of day.
È un’esagerazione attribuirlo interamente all’ispirazione di un uomo solo, fosse pure il genio più originale del tredicesimo secolo. La sua elementare etica di fraternità e di lealtà non si era mai del tutto spenta, e la Cristianità non era mai stata nulla di meno che cristiana. I grandi truismi sulla giustizia e sulla pietà si possono trovare nei più rozzi documenti monastici della transizione barbarica o nelle più rigide massime della decadenza bizantina. E già all’inizio dell’undicesimo e del dodicesimo secolo un più ampio movimento morale era chiaramente cominciato, ma ciò che di esso si può dire con giustizia è questo: che su tutti quei primi movimenti vi era ancora qualcosa di quell’antica austerità che veniva dal lungo periodo penitenziale. Era il crepuscolo del mattino; ma era ancora un crepuscolo grigio. Lo si può illustrare con la sola menzione di due o tre di queste riforme anteriori alla riforma francescana. L’istituzione monastica stessa, s’intende, era assai più antica di tutte queste cose; anzi era indubbiamente quasi tanto antica quanto il Cristianesimo. I suoi consigli di perfezione avevano sempre preso la forma di voti di castità, povertà e obbedienza. Con questi fini ultraterreni essa aveva da lungo tempo civilizzato gran parte del mondo. I monaci avevano insegnato alla gente ad arare e a seminare non meno che a leggere e a scrivere; anzi avevano insegnato alla gente quasi tutto ciò che la gente sapeva. Ma si può dire con verità che i monaci erano severamente pratici, nel senso che erano non solo pratici ma anche severi; benché fossero in genere severi con se stessi e pratici per gli altri. Tutto questo primo movimento monastico si era da lungo tempo assestato e senza dubbio spesso decaduto; ma quando giungiamo ai primi movimenti medievali questo carattere più austero è ancora manifesto. Si possono prendere tre esempi a illustrare il punto.
Primo: l’antico stampo sociale della schiavitù cominciava già a fondersi. Non solo lo schiavo si trasformava in servo della gleba, che era praticamente libero quanto alla propria fattoria e alla propria vita familiare, ma molti signori affrancavano del tutto schiavi e servi. Ciò avveniva sotto la pressione dei preti; ma soprattutto avveniva nello spirito di una penitenza. In un senso, s’intende, ogni società cattolica deve avere un’atmosfera di penitenza; ma io parlo di quello spirito più austero di penitenza che aveva espiato gli eccessi del paganesimo. Vi era intorno a tali restituzioni l’atmosfera del letto di morte; poiché molte di esse erano senza dubbio esempi di pentimento in punto di morte. Un ateo molto onesto con cui una volta discussi si servì dell’espressione: «Gli uomini sono stati tenuti in schiavitù solo dalla paura dell’inferno». Come gli feci notare, se avesse detto che gli uomini sono stati liberati dalla schiavitù solo dalla paura dell’inferno, si sarebbe almeno riferito a un fatto storico incontestabile.
Un altro esempio fu la radicale riforma della disciplina ecclesiastica da parte di papa Gregorio Settimo. Fu davvero una riforma, intrapresa per i più alti motivi e dagli effetti più salubri; condusse una penetrante inquisizione contro la simonia, ossia la corruzione finanziaria del clero; insistette su un ideale più serio e abnegante per la vita del parroco. Ma il fatto stesso che ciò prendesse in gran parte la forma di rendere universale l’obbligo del celibato darà la nota di qualcosa che, per quanto nobile, parrebbe a molti vagamente negativo. Il terzo esempio è in un senso il più forte di tutti. Poiché il terzo esempio fu una guerra; una guerra eroica e per molti di noi una guerra santa; ma pur sempre con tutte le nude e terribili responsabilità della guerra. Non v’è spazio qui per dire tutto ciò che si dovrebbe dire sulla vera natura delle Crociate. Tutti sanno che nell’ora più buia dei Secoli Bui una sorta di eresia era sorta in Arabia ed era divenuta una nuova religione di tipo militare ma nomade; invocando il nome di Maometto. Intrinsecamente aveva un carattere che si ritrova in molte eresie, dal musulmano al monista. All’eretico pareva una sana semplificazione della religione; mentre a un cattolico pare un’insana semplificazione della religione, perché riduce tutto a un’unica idea e così perde l’ampiezza e l’equilibrio del cattolicesimo. Comunque il suo carattere oggettivo era quello di un pericolo militare per la Cristianità, e la Cristianità l’aveva colpita nel cuore stesso, cercando di riconquistare i Luoghi Santi. Il grande duca Goffredo e i primi cristiani che presero d’assalto Gerusalemme furono eroi, se mai ve ne furono al mondo; ma furono gli eroi di una tragedia.
Ora ho preso questi due o tre esempi dei primi movimenti medievali per notare in essi un carattere generale, che rimanda alla penitenza seguita al paganesimo. Vi è in tutti questi movimenti qualcosa di tonificante pur nella sua desolazione, come un vento che soffia fra le fenditure dei monti. Quel vento, austero e puro, di cui parla il poeta, è davvero lo spirito del tempo, poiché è il vento di un mondo che è stato finalmente purificato. A chiunque sappia apprezzare le atmosfere, vi è qualcosa di chiaro e di pulito nell’atmosfera di questa società rude e spesso aspra. Le sue stesse concupiscenze sono pulite, poiché non hanno più alcun odore di perversione. Le sue stesse crudeltà sono pulite; non sono le voluttuose crudeltà dell’anfiteatro. Nascono o da un orrore molto semplice per la bestemmia o da un furore molto semplice per un’offesa. A poco a poco, contro questo grigio sfondo, la bellezza comincia ad apparire, come qualcosa di davvero fresco e delicato e soprattutto sorprendente. L’amore che ritorna non è più ciò che un tempo si chiamava platonico, ma ciò che ancora si chiama amore cavalleresco. I fiori e le stelle hanno riacquistato la loro prima innocenza. Il fuoco e l’acqua sono sentiti degni di essere il fratello e la sorella di un santo. La purga del paganesimo è finalmente compiuta.
Poiché l’acqua stessa è stata lavata. Il fuoco stesso è stato purificato come per mezzo del fuoco. L’acqua non è più l’acqua in cui gli schiavi venivano gettati a nutrire i pesci. Il fuoco non è più quel fuoco attraverso il quale i fanciulli venivano fatti passare a Moloch. I fiori non sanno più delle dimenticate ghirlande raccolte nel giardino di Priapo; le stelle non stanno più come segni della remota freddezza di dèi freddi come quei freddi fuochi. Sono come tutte le cose nuove appena fatte e in attesa di nuovi nomi, da colui che verrà a nominarle. Né l’universo né la terra hanno più ormai l’antico sinistro significato del mondo. Attendono una nuova riconciliazione con l’uomo, ma sono già capaci di essere riconciliate. L’uomo ha strappato dalla propria anima l’ultimo brandello del culto della natura, e può ritornare alla natura.
Mentre era ancora crepuscolo, una figura apparve silenziosa e improvvisa su un piccolo colle sopra la città, scura contro la tenebra che si dissolveva. Poiché era la fine di una lunga e severa notte, una notte di veglia, non priva della visita delle stelle. Stava con le mani levate, come in tante statue e pitture, e attorno a lui era un prorompere di uccelli canterini; e dietro di lui era lo spuntare del giorno.
CHAPTER III
FRANCIS THE FIGHTER
According to one tale, which if not true would be none the less typical, the very name of St. Francis was not so much a name as a nickname. There would be something akin to his familiar and popular instinct in the notion that he was nicknamed very much as an ordinary schoolboy might be called “Frenchy” at school. According to this version his name was not Francis at all but John; and his companions called him “Francesco”, or “The little Frenchman” because of his passion for the French poetry of the Troubadours. The more probable story is that his mother had him named John when he was born in the absence of his father, who shortly returned from a visit to France, Where his commercial success had filled him with so much enthusiasm for French taste and social usage that he gave his son the new name signifying the Frank or Frenchman. In either case the name had a certain significance, as connecting Francis from the first with what he himself regarded as the romantic fairy land of the Troubadours.
The name of the father was Pietro Bernadone and he was a substantial citizen of the guild of the cloth merchants in the town of Assisi. It is hard to describe the position of such a man without some appreciation of such a guild and even of such a town. It did not exactly correspond to anything that is meant in modern times either by a merchant or a man of business or a tradesman, or anything that exists under the conditions of capitalism. Bernadone may have employed people but he was not an employer; that is; he did not belong to an employing class as distinct from an employed class. The person we definitely hear of his employing is his son Francis; who, one is tempted to guess, was about the last person that any man of business would employ if it were convenient to employ anybody else. He was rich, as a peasant may be rich by the work of his own family; but he evidently expected his own family to work in a way almost as plain as a peasant’s. He was a prominent citizen, but he belonged to a social order which existed to prevent him being too prominent to be a citizen. It kept all such people on their own simple level, and no prosperity connoted that escape from drudgery by which in modern times the lad might have seemed to be a lord or a fine gentleman or something other than the cloth merchant’s son. This is a rule that is proved even in the exception. Francis was one of those people who are popular with everybody in any case; and his guiless swagger as a Troubadour and leader of French fashions made him a sort of romantic ringleader among the young men of the town. He threw money about both in extravagance and benevolence, in a way native to a man who never, all his life, exactly understood what money was. This moved his mother to mingled exultation and exasperation and she said, as any tradesman’s wife might say anywhere: “He is more like a prince than our son.” But one of the earliest glimpses we have of him shows him as simply selling bales of cloth from a booth in the market; which his mother may or may not have believed to be one of the habits of princes. This first glimpse of the young man in the market is symbolic in more ways than one. An incident occurred which is perhaps the shortest and sharpest summary that could be given of certain curious things which were a part of his character, long before it was transfigured by transcendental faith. While he was selling velvet and fine embroideries to some solid merchant of the town a beggar came imploring alms; evidently in a somewhat tactless manner. It was a rude and simple society and there were no laws to punish a starving man for expressing his need for food, such as have been established in a more humanitarian age; and the lack of any organised police permitted such persons to pester the wealthy without any great danger. But there was I believe, in many places a local custom of the guild forbidding outsiders to interrupt a fair bargain; and it is possible that some such thing put the mendicant more than normally in the wrong. Francis had all his life a great liking for people who had been put hopelessly in the wrong. On this occasion he seems to have dealt with the double interview with rather a divided mind; certainly with distraction, possibly with irritation. Perhaps he was all the more uneasy because of the almost fastidious standard of manners that came to him quite naturally. All are agreed that politeness flowed from him from the first, like one of the public fountains in such a sunny Italian market place. He might have written among his own poems as his own motto that verse of Mr. Belloc’s poem—
“Of Courtesy, it is much less Than courage of heart or holiness Yet in my walks it seems to me That the grace of God is in Courtesy.”
Nobody ever doubted that Francis Bernadone had courage of heart, even of the most manly and military sort; and a time was to come when there was quite as little doubt about the holiness and grace of God. But I think that if there was one thing about which he was punctilious, it was punctiliousness. If there was one thing of which so humble a man could be said to be proud, he was proud of good manners. Only behind his perfectly natural urbanity were wider and even wilder possibilities, of which we get the first flash in this trivial incident. Anyhow Francis was evidently torn two ways with the botheration of two talkers, but finished his business with the merchant somehow; and when he had finished it, found the beggar was gone. Francis leapt from his booth, left all the bales of velvet and embroidery behind him apparently unprotected, and went racing across the market-place like an arrow from the bow. Still running, he threaded the labrynth of the narrow and crooked streets of the little town, looking for his beggar whom he eventually discovered; and loaded the astonished mendicant with money. Then he straightened himself, so to speak, and swore before God that he would never all his life refuse help to a poor man. The sweeping simplicity of this undertaking is extremely characteristic. Never was any man so little afraid of his own promises. His life was one riot of rash vows; of rash vows that turned out right.
CAPITOLO III
FRANCESCO IL COMBATTENTE
Secondo un racconto, che se anche non fosse vero non sarebbe meno tipico, il nome stesso di san Francesco non era tanto un nome quanto un soprannome. Vi sarebbe qualcosa di affine al suo istinto familiare e popolare nell’idea che egli fosse soprannominato press’a poco come un comune scolaro potrebbe essere chiamato «il Franceschino» a scuola. Secondo questa versione il suo nome non era affatto Francesco ma Giovanni; e i suoi compagni lo chiamavano «Francesco», ossia «il piccolo Francese», per via della sua passione per la poesia francese dei Trovatori. La storia più probabile è che sua madre lo avesse fatto chiamare Giovanni quando nacque in assenza del padre, il quale tornò poco dopo da un viaggio in Francia, dove il suo successo commerciale lo aveva riempito di tanto entusiasmo per il gusto e i costumi sociali francesi che diede al figlio il nuovo nome che significa il Franco o Francese. In entrambi i casi il nome aveva un certo significato, poiché collegava Francesco fin dal principio con quella che egli stesso considerava la romantica terra fatata dei Trovatori.
Il nome del padre era Pietro Bernardone ed egli era un ragguardevole cittadino della corporazione dei mercanti di stoffe nella città di Assisi. È difficile descrivere la posizione di un tal uomo senza qualche apprezzamento di una tale corporazione e persino di una tale città. Essa non corrispondeva esattamente a nulla di ciò che nei tempi moderni s’intende per mercante o uomo d’affari o commerciante, né a nulla che esista nelle condizioni del capitalismo. Bernardone poteva impiegare persone, ma non era un datore di lavoro; vale a dire, non apparteneva a una classe di datori di lavoro distinta da una classe di lavoratori dipendenti. La persona che con certezza sappiamo egli impiegasse è suo figlio Francesco; il quale, si è tentati di supporre, era press’a poco l’ultima persona che un uomo d’affari impiegherebbe, se gli fosse comodo impiegare chiunque altro. Era ricco, come può essere ricco un contadino grazie al lavoro della propria famiglia; ma evidentemente si aspettava che la propria famiglia lavorasse in un modo quasi altrettanto semplice di quello di un contadino. Era un cittadino eminente, ma apparteneva a un ordine sociale che esisteva per impedirgli di essere troppo eminente per essere un cittadino. Manteneva tutta questa gente al proprio semplice livello, e nessuna prosperità comportava quella fuga dalla fatica per cui nei tempi moderni il ragazzo avrebbe potuto sembrare un signore o un gran gentiluomo o qualcosa di diverso dal figlio del mercante di stoffe. Questa è una regola che si prova anche nell’eccezione. Francesco era una di quelle persone che in ogni caso sono simpatiche a tutti; e la sua ingenua spavalderia di Trovatore e di corifeo delle mode francesi ne faceva una sorta di romantico caporione tra i giovani della città. Spargeva denaro tanto in stravaganze quanto in benevolenza, in un modo naturale a un uomo che mai, in tutta la sua vita, comprese esattamente che cosa fosse il denaro. Ciò muoveva sua madre a un misto di esultanza e di esasperazione, ed ella diceva, come potrebbe dire in qualunque luogo la moglie di un qualsiasi commerciante: «Somiglia più a un principe che a nostro figlio». Ma uno dei primi scorci che abbiamo di lui ce lo mostra semplicemente vendere balle di stoffa da un banco al mercato; cosa che sua madre poteva credere, o non credere, fosse una delle abitudini dei principi. Questo primo scorcio del giovane al mercato è simbolico in più di un senso. Accadde un episodio che è forse il più breve e più incisivo riassunto che si potrebbe dare di certe curiose cose che erano parte del suo carattere, molto prima che fosse trasfigurato da una fede trascendentale. Mentre vendeva velluto e fini ricami a qualche solido mercante della città, giunse un mendicante implorando l’elemosina; evidentemente in modo alquanto privo di tatto. Era una società rude e semplice, e non v’erano leggi per punire un uomo affamato che esprimesse il suo bisogno di cibo, quali sono state stabilite in un’età più umanitaria; e la mancanza di qualsiasi polizia organizzata permetteva a simili persone di importunare i ricchi senza gran pericolo. Ma vi era, credo, in molti luoghi, una consuetudine locale della corporazione che vietava agli estranei d’interrompere una lecita contrattazione; ed è possibile che qualcosa di simile ponesse il mendicante più del solito dalla parte del torto. Francesco ebbe per tutta la vita una gran simpatia per le persone che erano state poste irrimediabilmente dalla parte del torto. In questa occasione sembra aver affrontato il duplice colloquio con animo piuttosto diviso; certamente con distrazione, forse con irritazione. Forse era tanto più a disagio a causa dell’assai schizzinoso standard di buone maniere che gli veniva del tutto naturale. Tutti concordano che la cortesia sgorgava da lui fin dal principio, come una delle pubbliche fontane in un così assolato mercato italiano. Avrebbe potuto scrivere fra le proprie poesie, come proprio motto, quel verso del componimento del signor Belloc—
«Della Cortesia, è assai meno Del Coraggio del cuore o della santità Eppure nei miei vagabondaggi mi pare Che la grazia di Dio sia nella Cortesia.»
Nessuno dubitò mai che Francesco Bernardone avesse coraggio di cuore, persino della specie più virile e militare; e sarebbe venuto un tempo in cui vi sarebbe stato altrettanto poco dubbio sulla santità e sulla grazia di Dio. Ma penso che, se vi era una cosa in fatto della quale egli era scrupoloso, era la scrupolosità stessa. Se vi era una cosa della quale un uomo così umile potesse dirsi orgoglioso, egli era orgoglioso delle buone maniere. Solo che dietro la sua urbanità perfettamente naturale si celavano possibilità più ampie e persino più selvagge, di cui abbiamo il primo lampo in questo banale episodio. Comunque Francesco era evidentemente combattuto in due direzioni dal fastidio di due interlocutori, ma concluse in qualche modo il suo affare col mercante; e quando l’ebbe concluso, si accorse che il mendicante se n’era andato. Francesco balzò dal suo banco, lasciandosi dietro tutte le balle di velluto e di ricami apparentemente incustodite, e si mise a correre attraverso la piazza del mercato come una freccia scoccata dall’arco. Sempre correndo, s’infilò nel labirinto delle strade strette e tortuose della piccola città, cercando il suo mendicante, che alla fine scovò; e colmò di denaro lo stupito accattone. Poi si raddrizzò, per così dire, e giurò dinanzi a Dio che mai in tutta la sua vita avrebbe rifiutato aiuto a un povero. La radicale semplicità di questo impegno è estremamente caratteristica. Mai alcun uomo ebbe così poco timore delle proprie promesse. La sua vita fu un tumulto di voti avventati; di voti avventati che si rivelarono giusti.
The first biographers of Francis, naturally alive with the great religious revolution that he wrought, equally naturally looked back to his first years chiefly for omens and signs of such a spiritual earthquake. But writing at a greater distance, we shall not decrease that dramatic effect, but rather increase it, if we realise that there was not at this time any external sign of anything particularly mystical about the young man. He had not anything of that early sense of his vocation that has belonged to some of the saints. Over and above his main ambition to win fame as a French poet, he would seem to have most often thought of winning fame as a soldier. He was born kind; he was brave in the normal boyish fashion; but he drew the line in both in kindness and bravery pretty well where most boys would have drawn it; for instance, he had the human horror of leprosy of which few normal people felt any need to be ashamed. He had the love of gay and bright apparel which was inherent in the heraldic taste of medieval times and seems altogether to have been rather a festive figure. If he did not paint the town red, he would probably have preferred to paint it all the colours of the rainbow, as in a medieval picture. But in this story of the young man in gay garments scampering after the vanishing beggar in rags there are certain notes of his natural individuality that must be assumed from first to last.
For instance, there is the spirit of swiftness. In a sense he continued running for the rest of his life, as he ran after the beggar. Because nearly all the errands he ran were errands of mercy, there appeared in his portraiture a mere element of mildness which was true in the truest sense, but is easily misunderstood. A certain precipitancy was the very poise of his soul. This saint should be represented among the other saints as angels were sometimes represented in pictures of angels; with flying feet or with feathers; in the spirit of the text that makes angels winds and messengers a flaming fire. It is a curiosity of language that courage actually means running; and some of our sceptics will no doubt demonstrate that courage really means running away. But his courage was running, in the sense of rushing. With all his gentleness, there was originally something of impatience in his impetuosity. The psychological truth about it illustrates very well the modern muddle about the word “practical.” If we mean by what is practical what is most immediately practicable, we merely mean what is easiest. In that sense St. Francis was very impractical, and his ultimate aims were very unworldly. Bit if we mean by practicality a preference for prompt effort and energy over doubt or delay, he was very practical indeed. Some might call him a madman, but he was the very reverse of a dreamer. Nobody would be likely to call him a man of business; but he was very emphatically a man of action. In some of his early experiments he was rather too much of a man of action; he acted too soon and was too practical to be prudent. But at every turn of his extraordinary career we shall find him flinging himself around corners in the most unexpected fashion, as when he flew through the streets after the beggar.
Another element implied in the story, which was already partially a natural instinct, before it became supernatural ideal, was something that had never perhaps been wholly lost in those little republics of medieval Italy. It was something very puzzling to some people; something clearer as a rule to Southerners than to Northeners, and I think to Catholics than to Protestants; the quite natural assumption of the equality of men. It has nothing necessarily to do with the Franciscan love for men; on the contrary one of its merely practical tests is the equality of the duel. Perhaps a gentleman will never be fully an egalitarian until he can really quarrel with his servant. But it was an antecedant condition of the Franciscan brotherhood; and we feel it in this early and secular incident. Francis, I fancy, felt a real doubt about which he must attend to, the beggar or the merchant; and having attended to the merchant, he turned to attend the beggar; he thought of them as two men. This is a thing much more difficult to describe, in a society from which it is absent, but it was the original basis of the whole business; it was why the popular movement arose in that sort of place and that sort of man. His imaginative magnanimity rose like a tower to starry heights that might well seem dizzy and even crazy; but it was founded on this high table land of human equality.
I have taken this the first among a hundred tales of the youth of St. Francis, and dwelt on its significance a little, because until we have learned to look for the significance there will often seem to be little but a sort of light sentiment in telling the story. St. Francis is not a proper person to be patronised with merely “pretty” stories. There are often any number of them; but they are too often used so as to be a sort of sentimental sediment of the medieval world, instead of being, as the saint emphatically is, a challenge to the modern world. We must take his human development somewhat more seriously; and the next story in which we get a glimpse of it is in a very different setting. But in exactly the same way it opens, as if by accident, certain abysses of the mind and perhaps of the unconscious mind. Francis still looks more or less like an ordinary young man; and it is only when we look at him as an ordinary young man, that we realise what an extraordinary young man he was.
War had broken out between Assisi and Perugia. It is now fashionable to say in a satirical spirit that such wars did not so much break out as to go on idefinitely between the city states of medieval Italy. It will be enough to say here that if one of those medieval wars had really gone on without stopping for a century, it might possibly have come within a remote distance of killing as many people as we kill in a year, in one of our great modern scientific wars between our great modern industrial empires. But the citizens of the medieval republic were certainly under the limitation of only being asked to die for the things with which they had always lived, the house they inhabited, the shrines they venerated and the rulers and representatives they new; and had not the larger vision calling for them to die for the latest rumours about remote colonies as reported in anonymous newspapers. And if we infer from our own experience that war paralyzed civilization, we must at least admit that these warring towns turned out a number of paralytics who go by the names of Dante and Michael Angelo, Ariosto and Titian, Leonardo and Columbus, not to mention Catherine of Siena and the subject of this story. While we lament all this local patriotism as a hubbub of the Dark Ages, it must seem a rather curious fact that about three quarters of the greatest men who ever lived came out of these little towns and were often engaged in these little wars. It remains to be seen what will ultimately come out of our large towns; but there has been no sign of anything of this sort since they became large; and I have sometimes been haunted by a fancy of my youth, that these things will not come till there is a city wall around Clapham and the tocsin is rung at night to arm the citizens of Wimbledon.
I primi biografi di Francesco, naturalmente animati dalla grande rivoluzione religiosa che egli operò, altrettanto naturalmente ripercorsero i suoi primi anni soprattutto in cerca di presagi e segni di un simile terremoto spirituale. Ma scrivendo da maggiore distanza, non diminuiremo quell’effetto drammatico, bensì lo accresceremo, se ci rendiamo conto che non vi era a questo tempo alcun segno esteriore di alcunché di particolarmente mistico nel giovane. Non aveva nulla di quel precoce senso della propria vocazione che è appartenuto ad alcuni dei santi. Al di sopra e al di là della sua principale ambizione di conquistare fama come poeta francese, pare che avesse pensato più spesso a conquistare fama come soldato. Era nato buono; era coraggioso nel modo normale dei ragazzi; ma poneva il limite tanto nella bontà quanto nel coraggio press’a poco bene dove la maggior parte dei ragazzi l’avrebbe posto; per esempio, aveva l’umano orrore della lebbra, del quale pochi normali non sentivano alcun bisogno di vergognarsi. Aveva l’amore per le vesti gaie e vivaci che era inerente al gusto araldico dei tempi medievali, e pare complessivamente essere stato una figura piuttosto festosa. Se non dipingeva la città di rosso, avrebbe probabilmente preferito dipingerla di tutti i colori dell’arcobaleno, come in un dipinto medievale. Ma in questa storia del giovane in vesti gaie che corre dietro al mendicante cencioso che svanisce vi sono certe note della sua naturale individualità che vanno presupposte dal principio alla fine.
Per esempio, vi è lo spirito della rapidità. In un certo senso egli continuò a correre per il resto della sua vita, come corse dietro al mendicante. Poiché quasi tutte le commissioni per cui correva erano commissioni di misericordia, apparve nel suo ritratto un mero elemento di mitezza che era vero nel senso più vero, ma è facilmente frainteso. Una certa precipitazione era proprio l’equilibrio della sua anima. Questo santo andrebbe rappresentato tra gli altri santi come talora gli angeli venivano rappresentati nelle pitture di angeli; con i piedi alati o con le penne; nello spirito del testo che fa degli angeli venti e dei messaggeri una fiamma di fuoco. È una curiosità della lingua che coraggio significhi in realtà correre; e alcuni dei nostri scettici dimostreranno senza dubbio che coraggio significhi in realtà fuggire. Ma il suo coraggio era un correre, nel senso di uno slanciarsi. Con tutta la sua dolcezza, vi era in origine qualcosa d’impaziente nella sua impetuosità. La verità psicologica al riguardo illustra molto bene il moderno pasticcio intorno alla parola «pratico». Se per ciò che è pratico intendiamo ciò che è più immediatamente praticabile, intendiamo semplicemente ciò che è più facile. In quel senso san Francesco era assai poco pratico, e i suoi fini ultimi erano assai poco mondani. Ma se per praticità intendiamo una preferenza per lo sforzo pronto e l’energia rispetto al dubbio o all’indugio, egli era davvero molto pratico. Alcuni potrebbero chiamarlo un pazzo, ma era l’esatto contrario di un sognatore. Nessuno sarebbe propenso a chiamarlo un uomo d’affari; ma era, con ogni enfasi, un uomo d’azione. In alcuni dei suoi primi esperimenti fu fin troppo un uomo d’azione; agì troppo presto e fu troppo pratico per essere prudente. Ma a ogni svolta della sua straordinaria carriera lo troveremo gettarsi dietro gli angoli nel modo più inaspettato, come quando volò per le strade dietro al mendicante.
Un altro elemento implicito nella storia, che era già in parte un istinto naturale, prima di divenire ideale soprannaturale, era qualcosa che forse non era mai andato del tutto perduto in quelle piccole repubbliche dell’Italia medievale. Era qualcosa di assai sconcertante per certi; qualcosa di norma più chiaro ai Meridionali che ai Settentrionali, e credo ai cattolici che ai protestanti; l’assunto del tutto naturale dell’uguaglianza degli uomini. Non ha necessariamente nulla a che fare con l’amore francescano per gli uomini; al contrario, una delle sue prove meramente pratiche è l’uguaglianza del duello. Forse un gentiluomo non sarà mai pienamente un egualitario finché non potrà davvero litigare col proprio servo. Ma era una condizione antecedente della fratellanza francescana; e la sentiamo in questo precoce e profano episodio. Francesco, immagino, provò un vero dubbio su chi dovesse curare, il mendicante o il mercante; e avendo curato il mercante, si volse a curare il mendicante; li pensava come due uomini. Questa è una cosa assai più difficile da descrivere, in una società da cui è assente, ma era la base originaria dell’intera faccenda; era il motivo per cui il movimento popolare sorse in quel genere di luogo e in quel genere di uomo. La sua immaginosa magnanimità si levò come una torre verso stellate altezze che potevano bene sembrare vertiginose e persino folli; ma era fondata su questo alto altopiano dell’uguaglianza umana.
Ho preso questo, il primo fra cento racconti della giovinezza di san Francesco, e mi sono soffermato un poco sul suo significato, perché finché non abbiamo imparato a cercare il significato spesso sembrerà esservi poco più di una sorta di lieve sentimentalismo nel narrare la storia. San Francesco non è persona da trattare con condiscendenza mediante storie meramente «graziose». Ve ne sono spesso a non finire; ma troppo spesso sono usate in modo da essere una sorta di sedimento sentimentale del mondo medievale, invece di essere, come il santo enfaticamente è, una sfida al mondo moderno. Dobbiamo prendere il suo sviluppo umano un po’ più sul serio; e la storia successiva in cui ne cogliamo uno scorcio è in una cornice assai diversa. Ma esattamente nello stesso modo essa apre, come per caso, certi abissi della mente e forse della mente inconscia. Francesco sembra ancora più o meno un giovane comune; ed è solo quando lo guardiamo come un giovane comune che ci rendiamo conto di quale straordinario giovane egli fosse.
Era scoppiata la guerra tra Assisi e Perugia. Ora è di moda dire, in spirito satirico, che simili guerre non tanto scoppiavano quanto proseguivano indefinitamente tra le città-stato dell’Italia medievale. Basterà dire qui che se una di quelle guerre medievali fosse davvero proseguita senza sosta per un secolo, sarebbe forse giunta a distanza remota dall’uccidere tante persone quante ne uccidiamo in un anno, in una delle nostre grandi guerre scientifiche moderne tra i nostri grandi imperi industriali moderni. Ma i cittadini della repubblica medievale erano certamente sottoposti alla limitazione di essere chiamati a morire solo per le cose con cui erano sempre vissuti: la casa che abitavano, i santuari che veneravano e i governanti e rappresentanti che conoscevano; e non avevano la più ampia visione che li chiamasse a morire per le ultime dicerie su remote colonie riportate da giornali anonimi. E se dalla nostra esperienza inferiamo che la guerra paralizzò la civiltà, dobbiamo almeno ammettere che queste città in guerra sfornarono un certo numero di paralitici che vanno sotto i nomi di Dante e Michel Angelo, Ariosto e Tiziano, Leonardo e Colombo, per non dire di Caterina da Siena e del soggetto di questa storia. Mentre lamentiamo tutto questo patriottismo locale come uno schiamazzo dei Secoli Bui, deve sembrare un fatto piuttosto curioso che circa tre quarti dei più grandi uomini mai vissuti uscirono da queste piccole città e furono spesso impegnati in queste piccole guerre. Resta da vedere che cosa in ultimo uscirà dalle nostre grandi città; ma non vi è stato segno di nulla di simile da quando sono divenute grandi; e talvolta mi ha perseguitato una fantasia della mia giovinezza, che queste cose non verranno finché non vi sarà un muro di città intorno a Clapham e la campana a martello suonerà di notte per chiamare alle armi i cittadini di Wimbledon.
Anyhow, the tocsin was rung at Assisi and the citizens armed, and among them was Francis the son of the cloth merchant. He went out to fight with some company of lancers and in some fight or other he and his little band were taken prisoners. To me it seems most probable that there had been some tale of treason or cowardice about the disaster; for we are told that there was one of the captives with whom his fellow-prisoners flatly refused to associate even in prison; and when this happens in such circumstances, it is generally because the military blame for the surrender is thrown on some individual. Anyhow, somebody noted a small but rather curious thing, though it might seem rather negative than positive. Francis, we are told, moved among his captive companions with all his characteristic courtesy and even conviviality, “liberal and hilarious” as somebody said of him, resolved to keep up their spirits and his own. And when he came across the mysterious outcast, traitor or coward or whatever he was called, he simply treated him exactly like all the rest, neither with coldness or compassion, but with the same unaffected gaiety and good fellowship. But if there had been present in that prison someone with a sort of second sight about the truth and trend of spiritual things, he might have known he was in the presence of something new and seemingly almost anarchic; a deep tide driving out to uncharted seas of charity. For in this sense there was really something wanting in Francis of Assisi, something to which he was blind that he might see better and more beautiful things. All those limits in good fellowship and good form, all those landmarks of social life that divide the tolerable and the intolerable, all those social scruples and conventional conditions that are normal and even noble in ordinary men, all those things that hold many decent societies together, could never hold this man at all. He liked as he liked; he seems to have liked everybody, but especially those whom everybody disliked him for liking. Something very vast and universal was already present in that narrow dungeon; and such a seer might have seen in its darkness that red halo of caritas caritatum which marks one saint among saints as well as among men. He might well have heard the first whisper of that wild blessing that afterwards took the form of a blasphemy; “He listens to those whom God himself will not listen”.
But though such a seer might have seen such a truth, it is exceedingly doubtful if Francis himself saw it. He had acted out of an unconscious largeness, or in the fine medieval phrase largesse, within himself, something might almost have been lawless if it had not been reaching out to a more divine law; but is doubtful whether he new the law was divine. It is evident that he had not at this time any notion of abandoning the military, still less of adopting the monastic life. It is true that there is not, as pacifists and prigs imagine, the least inconsistency between loving men and fighting them, if we fight them fairly and for a good cause. But it seems to me that there was more than this involved; that the mind of the young man was really running towards a military morality in any case. About this time the first calamity crossed his path in the form of a malady which was to revisit him many times and hamper his headlong career. Sickness made him more serious; but one fancies it would only have made him a more serious soldier, or even more serious about soldiering. And while he was recovering, something rather larger than the little fueds and raids of the Italian towns opened an avenue of adventure and ambition. The crown of Sicily, a considerable centre of controversy at the time, was apparently claimed by a certain Gauthier de Brienne, and the Papal cause to aid which Gauthier was called in aroused enthusiasm among a number of young Assisians, including Francis, who proposed to march into Apulia on the count’s behalf; perhaps his French name had something to do with it. For it must never be forgotten that though that world was in one sense a world of little things, it was a world of little things concerned with great things. There was more internationalism in the lands dotted with tiny republics than in the huge homogeneous impenetrable national divisions of to-day. The legal authority of the Assisian magistrates might hardly reach further than a bow-shot from their high embattled city walls. But their sympathies might be with the ride of the Normans through Sicily or the palace of the Troubadours at Toulouse; with the Emperor throned in the German forests or the great Pope dying in the exile of Salerno. Above all, it must be remembered that when the interests of an age are mainly religious they must be universal. Nothing can be more universal than the universe. And there are several things about the religious position at that particular moment which modern people not unnaturally fail to realise. For one thing, modern people naturally think of people so remote as ancient people, and even early people. We feel vaguely that these things happened in the first ages of the Church. The Church was already a good deal more than a thousand years old. That is, the Church was then rather older than France is now, a great deal older than England is now. And she looked old then; almost as old as she does now; possibly older than she does now. The Church looked like great Charlemagne with the long white beard, who had already fought a hundred wars with the heathen, and in the legend was bidden by an angel to go forth and fight once more though he was two thousand years old. The Church had topped her thousand years and turned the corner for the second thousand; she had come through the Dark Ages in which nothing could be done except desperate fighting against the barbarians and the stubborn repitition of the creed. The creed was still being repeated after the victory or escape; but it is not unnatural to suppose that there was something a little monotonous about the repitition. The Church looked old then as now; and there were some who thought her dying as now. In truth orthodoxy was not dead but it may have been dull; it is certain that some people began to think it dull. The Troubadours of the Provencal movement had already begun to take that turn or twist towards Oriental fancies and the paradox of pessimism, which always comes to Europeans as something fresh when their own sanity seems to be something stale. It is likely enough that after all those centuries of hopeless war without and ruthless asceticism within, the official orthodoxy seemed to be something stale. The freshness and freedom of the first Christians seemed then as much as now a lost and almost prehistoric age of gold. Rome was still more rational than anything else; the Church was really wiser but it may well have seemed wearier than the world. There was something more adventurous and alluring, perhaps, about the mad metaphysics that had been blown across out of Asia. Dreams were gathering like dark clouds over the Midi to break in a thunder of anathema and civil war. Only the light lay on the great plain around Rome; but the light was blank and the plain was flat; and there was no stir in the still air and the immemorial silence about the sacred town.
Comunque, la campana a martello suonò ad Assisi e i cittadini si armarono, e fra loro era Francesco, il figlio del mercante di stoffe. Uscì a combattere con una compagnia di lancieri e in qualche scontro egli e la sua piccola banda furono fatti prigionieri. A me pare più che probabile che vi fosse stata qualche voce di tradimento o di viltà intorno alla disfatta; poiché ci si dice che vi era uno dei prigionieri con cui i suoi compagni di prigionia si rifiutavano recisamente di associarsi persino in carcere; e quando ciò accade in tali circostanze, è generalmente perché la colpa militare della resa viene gettata su qualche individuo. Comunque, qualcuno notò una cosa piccola ma piuttosto curiosa, benché potesse sembrare più negativa che positiva. Francesco, ci si dice, si muoveva tra i suoi compagni prigionieri con tutta la sua caratteristica cortesia e persino convivialità, «liberale e ilare», come qualcuno disse di lui, risoluto a tenere alto il loro morale e il proprio. E quando s’imbatté nel misterioso reietto, traditore o codardo o comunque lo chiamassero, lo trattò semplicemente esattamente come tutti gli altri, né con freddezza né con compassione, ma con la stessa schietta allegria e cameratismo. Ma se fosse stato presente in quel carcere qualcuno con una sorta di secondo sguardo sulla verità e sull’andamento delle cose spirituali, avrebbe potuto sapere di trovarsi in presenza di qualcosa di nuovo e apparentemente quasi anarchico; una profonda marea che spingeva verso mari inesplorati di carità. Poiché in questo senso vi era davvero qualcosa che mancava in Francesco d’Assisi, qualcosa a cui era cieco affinché potesse vedere cose migliori e più belle. Tutti quei limiti nel cameratismo e nella buona forma, tutti quei capisaldi della vita sociale che dividono il tollerabile dall’intollerabile, tutti quegli scrupoli sociali e quelle condizioni convenzionali che sono normali e persino nobili negli uomini comuni, tutte quelle cose che tengono insieme molte società rispettabili, non poterono mai in alcun modo trattenere quest’uomo. Amava come gli piaceva; pare che gli piacessero tutti, ma specialmente coloro che a tutti erano sgraditi, cosa per cui gli altri lo disapprovavano. Qualcosa di assai vasto e universale era già presente in quell’angusto sotterraneo; e un tal veggente avrebbe potuto vedere nella sua tenebra quel rosso alone di caritas caritatum che segna un santo fra i santi non meno che fra gli uomini. Avrebbe ben potuto udire il primo sussurro di quella selvaggia benedizione che in seguito prese la forma di una bestemmia: «Egli ascolta coloro che Dio stesso non vuole ascoltare».
Ma benché un tal veggente potesse aver visto una tale verità, è estremamente dubbio che Francesco stesso la vedesse. Aveva agito per un’incosciente ampiezza, o nella bella espressione medievale largesse, dentro di sé qualcosa che avrebbe potuto quasi essere illegale se non si fosse protesa verso una legge più divina; ma è dubbio se egli sapesse che la legge era divina. È evidente che a questo tempo non aveva alcuna idea di abbandonare la vita militare, e ancor meno di abbracciare quella monastica. È vero che non vi è, come immaginano i pacifisti e i saccenti, la minima incoerenza tra l’amare gli uomini e il combatterli, se li combattiamo lealmente e per una buona causa. Ma mi pare che vi fosse in gioco più di questo; che la mente del giovane corresse davvero, in ogni caso, verso una morale militare. Intorno a questo tempo la prima sciagura attraversò il suo cammino nella forma di un male che doveva ritornare a visitarlo molte volte e ostacolare la sua impetuosa carriera. La malattia lo rese più serio; ma si immagina che l’avrebbe reso soltanto un soldato più serio, o persino più serio riguardo al mestiere delle armi. E mentre si andava rimettendo, qualcosa di piuttosto più grande delle piccole faide e scorrerie delle città italiane aprì un varco all’avventura e all’ambizione. La corona di Sicilia, considerevole centro di controversia in quel tempo, era a quanto pare rivendicata da un certo Gualtiero di Brienne, e la causa papale a sostegno della quale Gualtiero fu chiamato suscitò entusiasmo fra un certo numero di giovani assisani, tra cui Francesco, che si proposero di marciare in Puglia in favore del conte; forse il suo nome francese ebbe qualcosa a che vedere con ciò. Poiché non si deve mai dimenticare che, benché quel mondo fosse in un senso un mondo di piccole cose, era un mondo di piccole cose che avevano a che fare con grandi cose. Vi era più internazionalismo nelle terre costellate di minuscole repubbliche che nelle enormi, omogenee, impenetrabili divisioni nazionali di oggi. L’autorità legale dei magistrati assisani poteva forse a stento estendersi più in là di un tiro d’arco dalle loro alte mura merlate di città. Ma le loro simpatie potevano andare alla cavalcata dei Normanni attraverso la Sicilia o al palazzo dei Trovatori a Tolosa; all’Imperatore assiso in trono nelle foreste germaniche o al grande Papa morente nell’esilio di Salerno. Soprattutto, va ricordato che quando gli interessi di un’epoca sono principalmente religiosi devono essere universali. Nulla può essere più universale dell’universo. E vi sono parecchie cose sulla posizione religiosa in quel particolare momento che le persone moderne, non innaturalmente, non riescono a cogliere. Anzitutto, le persone moderne pensano naturalmente a gente tanto remota come a gente antica, e persino primitiva. Sentiamo vagamente che queste cose accaddero nelle prime età della Chiesa. La Chiesa aveva già assai più di mille anni. Vale a dire, la Chiesa era allora piuttosto più antica di quanto la Francia sia ora, assai più antica di quanto l’Inghilterra sia ora. E appariva vecchia già allora; quasi tanto vecchia quanto appare ora; forse più vecchia di quanto appaia ora. La Chiesa somigliava al grande Carlomagno dalla lunga barba bianca, che aveva già combattuto cento guerre con i pagani e nella leggenda fu comandato da un angelo di uscire a combattere ancora una volta benché avesse duemila anni. La Chiesa aveva superato i suoi mille anni e svoltato l’angolo verso il secondo migliaio; era passata attraverso i Secoli Bui in cui nulla si poteva fare se non un disperato combattere contro i barbari e l’ostinata ripetizione del credo. Il credo veniva ancora ripetuto dopo la vittoria o lo scampo; ma non è innaturale supporre che vi fosse qualcosa di un po’ monotono nella ripetizione. La Chiesa appariva vecchia allora come ora; e vi erano alcuni che la credevano morente, come ora. In verità l’ortodossia non era morta, ma poteva essere spenta; è certo che alcuni cominciarono a ritenerla spenta. I Trovatori del movimento provenzale avevano già cominciato a prendere quella piega o torsione verso le fantasie orientali e il paradosso del pessimismo, che giunge sempre agli Europei come qualcosa di fresco quando la loro stessa sanità sembra qualcosa di stantìo. È abbastanza probabile che, dopo tutti quei secoli di guerra senza speranza all’esterno e di spietato ascetismo all’interno, l’ortodossia ufficiale sembrasse qualcosa di stantìo. La freschezza e la libertà dei primi cristiani sembravano allora, tanto quanto ora, una perduta e quasi preistorica età dell’oro. Roma era ancora più razionale di ogni altra cosa; la Chiesa era davvero più saggia, ma poteva bene sembrare più stanca del mondo. Vi era qualcosa di più avventuroso e allettante, forse, nella folle metafisica che era stata soffiata di là dall’Asia. I sogni si andavano addensando come cupe nubi sul Midi, per rompere in un tuono di anatema e di guerra civile. Solo la luce giaceva sulla grande pianura intorno a Roma; ma la luce era vuota e la pianura era piatta; e non v’era moto nell’aria immota e nell’immemorabile silenzio intorno alla città sacra.
High in the dark house of Assisi Francesco Bernadonne slept and dreamed of arms. There came to him in the darkness a vision splendid with swords, patterned after the cross in the Crusading fashion, of spears and shields and helmets hung in a high armoury, all bearing the sacred sign. When he awoke he accepted the dream as a trumpet bidding him to the battlefield, and rushed out to take horse and arms. He delighted in all the exercises of chivalry; and was evidently an accomplished cavalier and fighting man by the tests of the camp. He would doubtless at any time have preferred a Christian sort of chivalry; but it seems clear that he was also in a mood which thirsted for glory, though in him that glory would always have been identical with honour. He was not without some vision of that wreath of laurel which Ceasar has left for all the Latins. As he rode out to war the great gate in the deep wall of Assisi resounded with his last boast, “I shall come back a great prince.”
A little way along the road his sickness rose again and threw him. It seems highly probable, in the light of his impetuous temper, that he had ridden away long before he was fit to move. And in the darkness of this second and fare more desolating interruption, he seems to have had another dream in which a voice said to him, “You have mistaken the meaning of the vision. Return to your own town.” And Francis trailed back in his sickness to Assisi, a very dismal and disappointed and perhaps even derided figure, with nothing to do but wait for what should happen next. It was his first descent into a dark ravine that is called the valley of humiliation, which seemed to him very rocky and desolate, but in which he was afterwards to find many flowers.
But he was not only disappointed and humiliated; he was very much puzzled and bewildered. He still firmly believed that his two dreams must have meant something; and he could not imagine what they could possibly mean. It was while he was drifting, one might even say mooning, about the streets of Assisi and the fields outside the city wall, that an incident occurred to him which has not always been immediately connected with the business of the dreams, but which seems to me the obvious culmination of them. He was riding listlessly in some wayside place, apparently in the open country, when he saw a figure coming along the road towards him and halted; for he saw it was a leper. And he knew instantly that his courage was challenged, not as the world challenges, but as one would challenge who knew the secrets of the heart of a man. What he saw advancing was not the banner and spears of Perugia, from which it never occurred to him to shrink; nor the armies that fought for the crown of Sicily, of which he had always thought as a courageous man thinks of mere vulgar danger. Francis Bernadone saw his fear coming up the road towards him; the fear that comes from within and not without; though it stood white and horrible in the sunlight. For once in the long rush of his life his soul must have stood still. Then he sprang from his horse, knowing nothing between stillness and swiftness, and rushed on the leper and threw his arms around him. It was the beginning of a long vocation of ministry among many lepers, for whom he did many services; to this man he gave what money he could and mounted and rode on. We do not know how far he rode, or with what sense of the things around him; but it is said that when he looked back, he could see no figure on the road.
In alto, nella buia casa di Assisi, Francesco Bernardone dormiva e sognava armi. Gli venne nelle tenebre una visione splendida di spade, foggiate a forma di croce alla maniera dei Crociati, di lance e scudi ed elmi appesi in un’alta armeria, tutti recanti il sacro segno. Al risveglio accolse il sogno come una tromba che lo chiamava al campo di battaglia, e si precipitò fuori a prendere cavallo e armi. Godeva di tutti gli esercizi della cavalleria; ed era evidentemente un cavaliere compiuto e un uomo d’arme secondo i criteri dell’accampamento. Certo in ogni tempo avrebbe preferito una cavalleria di stampo cristiano; ma pare chiaro che fosse anche in una disposizione d’animo assetata di gloria, sebbene in lui quella gloria sarebbe stata sempre tutt’uno con l’onore. Non era privo di una qualche visione di quella corona d’alloro che Cesare ha lasciato in eredità a tutti i Latini. Mentre cavalcava alla guerra, la gran porta nell’alto muro di Assisi risuonò della sua ultima vanteria: «Tornerò gran principe».
Poco più avanti lungo la strada la sua malattia risorse di nuovo e lo abbatté. Sembra assai probabile, alla luce del suo temperamento impetuoso, che egli fosse partito a cavallo molto prima di essere in grado di muoversi. E nelle tenebre di questa seconda e ben più desolante interruzione, pare che avesse un altro sogno, nel quale una voce gli disse: «Hai frainteso il senso della visione. Torna alla tua città». E Francesco se ne tornò strascicandosi nella sua malattia ad Assisi, figura assai squallida, delusa e forse persino derisa, senza nulla da fare se non aspettare ciò che sarebbe accaduto poi. Fu la sua prima discesa in un oscuro burrone che si chiama la valle dell’umiliazione, che gli parve assai roccioso e desolato, ma nel quale in seguito avrebbe trovato molti fiori.
Ma non era soltanto deluso e umiliato; era anche molto perplesso e sconcertato. Continuava a credere fermamente che i suoi due sogni dovessero pur significare qualcosa; e non riusciva a immaginare che cosa potessero mai significare. Fu mentre andava vagando, si potrebbe persino dire fantasticando, per le strade di Assisi e per i campi fuori delle mura della città, che gli capitò un episodio che non sempre è stato messo subito in rapporto con la faccenda dei sogni, ma che a me pare esserne il coronamento evidente. Cavalcava svogliatamente in un luogo qualunque lungo la via, apparentemente in aperta campagna, quando vide una figura che gli veniva incontro lungo la strada e si fermò; perché vide che era un lebbroso. E capì all’istante che il suo coraggio era messo alla prova, non come lo mette alla prova il mondo, ma come lo metterebbe chi conoscesse i segreti del cuore di un uomo. Ciò che vedeva avanzare non era lo stendardo e le lance di Perugia, davanti a cui non gli venne mai in mente di ritrarsi; né gli eserciti che combattevano per la corona di Sicilia, ai quali aveva sempre pensato come un uomo coraggioso pensa a un pericolo volgare e comune. Francesco Bernardone vide la sua paura salire verso di lui lungo la strada; la paura che viene da dentro e non da fuori; benché stesse là, bianca e orribile, nella luce del sole. Per una volta nella lunga corsa della sua vita la sua anima dovette fermarsi. Poi balzò da cavallo, senza conoscere via di mezzo tra l’immobilità e la fulmineità, e si slanciò sul lebbroso e lo strinse tra le braccia. Fu l’inizio di una lunga vocazione di servizio tra molti lebbrosi, per i quali fece molte cose; a quest’uomo diede quel denaro che poteva, poi rimontò a cavallo e proseguì. Non sappiamo quanto lontano cavalcasse, né con quale coscienza delle cose intorno a sé; ma si racconta che, quando si volse a guardare indietro, non riuscì a vedere alcuna figura sulla strada.
CHAPTER IV
FRANCIS THE BUILDER
We have now reached the great break in the life of Francis of Assisi; the point at which something happened to him that must remain greatly dark to most of us, who are ordinary and selfish men whom God has not broken to make anew.
In dealing with this difficult passage, especially for my own purpose of making things moderately easy for the more secular sympathiser, I have hesitated as to the more proper course; and have eventually decided to state first of all what happened, with little more of a hint of what I imagine to have been the meaning of what happened. The fuller meaning may be debated more easily afterwards, when it was unfolded in the full Franciscan life. Anyway, what happened was this. The story very largely revolves around the ruins of the Church of St. Damien, an old shrine in Assisi which was apparently neglected and falling to pieces. Here Francis was in the habit of praying before the crucifix during those dark and aimless days of transition which followed the tragical collapse of all his military ambitions, probably made bitter by some loss of social prestige terrible to his sensitive spirit. As he did so he heard a voice saying to him, “Francis, seest thou not that my house is in ruins? Go and restore it for me.”
Francis sprang up and went. To go and do something was one of the driving demands of his nature; probably he had gone and done it before he had at all thoroughly thought out what he had done. In any case what he had done was something very decisive and immediately very disastrous for his singular social career. In the coarse conventional language of the uncomprehending world, he stole. From his own enthusiastic point of view, he extended to his venerable father Peter Bernadone the exquisite excitement and inestimable privilege of assisting, more or less unconsciously, in the rebuilding of St. Damiens Church. In point of fact what he did first was to sell his own horse and then go off and sell several bales of his father’s cloth, making the sign of the cross over them to indicate their pious and charitable destination. Peter Bernadone did not see things in this light. Peter Bernadone indeed had not very much light to see by, so far as understanding the genius and temperament of his extraordinary son was concerned. Instead of understanding in what sort of a wind and flame of abstract appetites the lad was living, instead of simply telling him (as the priest practically did later) that he done an indefensible thing with the best intentions, old Bernadone took up the matter in the hardest style; in a legal and literal fashion. He used absolute political powers like a heathen father, and himself put his son under lock and key as a vulgar thief. It would appear that the cry was caught up among many with whom the unlucky Francis had once been popular; and altogether, in his efforts to build up the house of God he had only succeeded in bringing his own house about his ears and lying buried under the ruins. The quarrel dragged drearily through several stages; at one time the wretched young man seems to have disappeared underground, so to speak, into some cavern or cellar where he remained huddled hopelessly in the darkness. Anyhow, it was his blackest moment; the whole world had turned over; the whole world was on top of him.
When he came out, it was only perhaps gradually that anybody grasped that something had happened. He and his father were summoned in the court of the bishop; for Francis had refused the authority of all legal tribunals. The bishop addressed some remarks to him, full of that excellent common sense which the Catholic Church keeps permanently as the background for all the fiery attitudes of her saints. He told Francis that he must unquestionably restore the money to his father; that no blessing could follow a work done by unjust methods; and in short (to put it crudely) if the young fanatic would give back his money to the old fool, the incident would then terminate. There was a new air about Francis. He was no longer crushed, still less crawling, so far as his father was concerned; yet his words do not, I think, indicate either just indignation or wanton insult or anything in the nature of a mere continuation of the quarrel. They are rather remotely akin to the mysterious utterances of his great model, “What have I to do with thee?” or even the terrible “Touch me not.”
He stood up before them all and said, “Up to this time I have called Pietro Bernadone father, but now I am the servant of God. Not only the money but everything that can be called his I will restore to my father, even the very clothes he has given me.” And he rent off all his garments except one; and they saw that it was a hair-shirt.
He piled the garments in a heap on the floor and threw the money on top of them. Then he turned to the bishop, and received his blessing, like one who turns his back on society; and, according to the account, went out as he was into the cold world. Apparently it was literally a cold world at the moment, and snow was on the ground. A curious detail, very deep in its significance, I fancy, is given in the same account of this great crisis in his life. He went out half-naked in his hair shirt into the winter woods, walking the frozen ground between the frosty trees: a man without a father. He was penniless, he was parentless, he was to all appearances without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world; and as he went under the frosty trees, he burst suddenly into song.
It was apparently noted as remarkable that the language in which he sang was French, or that Provencal which was called for convenience French. It was not his native language; and it was in his native language that he ultimately won fame as a poet; indeed St. Francis is one of the very first of the national poets in the purely national dialects of Europe. But it was the language with which all his most boyish ardours and ambitions had been identified; it was for him pre-eminently the language of romance. That it broke from him in this extraordinary extremity seems to me something at first sight very strange and in the last analysis very significant. What that significance was, or may well have been, I will try to suggest in the subsequent chapter; it is enough to indicate here that the whole philosophy of St. Francis revolved around the idea of a new supernatural light on natural things, which meant the ultimate recovery not the ultimate refusal of natural things. And for the purpose of this purely narrative part of the business, it is enough to record that while he wandered in the winter forest in his hair-shirt, like the very wildest of the hermits, he sang in the tongue of the Troubadours.
CAPITOLO IV
FRANCESCO IL COSTRUTTORE
Siamo ora giunti alla grande frattura nella vita di Francesco d’Assisi; il punto in cui gli accadde qualcosa che deve restare in gran parte oscuro alla maggior parte di noi, che siamo uomini comuni ed egoisti che Dio non ha spezzato per rifarli nuovi.
Nel trattare questo difficile passaggio, specialmente per il mio scopo di rendere le cose moderatamente facili al lettore più laico e simpatizzante, ho esitato sul procedimento più opportuno; e ho infine deciso di esporre anzitutto ciò che accadde, con poco più di un accenno a ciò che immagino sia stato il significato di ciò che accadde. Il significato più pieno potrà essere discusso più agevolmente in seguito, quando esso si dispiegò nella piena vita francescana. Comunque, ciò che accadde fu questo. La storia ruota in gran parte intorno alle rovine della chiesa di San Damiano, un antico santuario di Assisi che era a quanto pare trascurato e cadente in pezzi. Qui Francesco era solito pregare dinanzi al crocifisso durante quei giorni bui e senza meta di transizione che seguirono il tragico crollo di tutte le sue ambizioni militari, resi probabilmente amari da qualche perdita di prestigio sociale terribile per il suo spirito sensibile. Mentre così faceva, udì una voce che gli diceva: «Francesco, non vedi che la mia casa è in rovina? Va’ e restaurala per me».
Francesco balzò in piedi e andò. Andare e fare qualcosa era una delle esigenze impellenti della sua natura; probabilmente era andato e l’aveva fatto prima ancora di aver ben ponderato ciò che aveva fatto. In ogni caso ciò che aveva fatto era qualcosa di molto decisivo e immediatamente molto disastroso per la sua singolare carriera sociale. Nel rozzo linguaggio convenzionale del mondo che non comprende, egli rubò. Dal suo entusiastico punto di vista, estese al suo venerabile padre Pietro Bernardone la squisita emozione e l’inestimabile privilegio di concorrere, più o meno inconsapevolmente, alla ricostruzione della chiesa di San Damiano. Di fatto ciò che fece per primo fu vendere il proprio cavallo e poi andarsene a vendere parecchie balle della stoffa di suo padre, facendo su di esse il segno della croce per indicarne la pia e caritatevole destinazione. Pietro Bernardone non vedeva le cose sotto questa luce. Pietro Bernardone, in verità, non aveva molta luce con cui vedere, per quanto riguardava la comprensione del genio e del temperamento del suo straordinario figlio. Invece di comprendere in che sorta di vento e fiamma di appetiti astratti il ragazzo viveva, invece di dirgli semplicemente (come praticamente fece più tardi il sacerdote) che aveva fatto una cosa indifendibile con le migliori intenzioni, il vecchio Bernardone prese la faccenda nel modo più duro; in maniera legale e letterale. Esercitò poteri politici assoluti come un padre pagano, e mise egli stesso il figlio sotto chiave come un volgare ladro. Parrebbe che il grido fosse raccolto da molti presso i quali lo sventurato Francesco era stato un tempo popolare; e insomma, nei suoi sforzi di edificare la casa di Dio non era riuscito che a farsi crollare addosso la propria casa e a giacere sepolto sotto le rovine. La lite si trascinò tristemente attraverso vari stadi; a un certo momento il misero giovane sembra essere scomparso sottoterra, per così dire, in qualche caverna o cantina dove rimase rannicchiato senza speranza nell’oscurità. Comunque, fu il suo momento più nero; il mondo intero si era rovesciato; il mondo intero gli stava addosso.
Quando ne uscì, fu forse solo gradualmente che qualcuno afferrò che qualcosa era accaduto. Egli e suo padre furono convocati alla corte del vescovo; poiché Francesco aveva rifiutato l’autorità di ogni tribunale legale. Il vescovo gli rivolse alcune osservazioni, piene di quell’eccellente buon senso che la Chiesa cattolica mantiene permanentemente come sfondo di tutti gli atteggiamenti focosi dei suoi santi. Disse a Francesco che doveva indubbiamente restituire il denaro a suo padre; che nessuna benedizione poteva seguire a un’opera compiuta con metodi ingiusti; e in breve (per dirla crudamente) se il giovane fanatico avesse restituito il denaro al vecchio sciocco, l’incidente sarebbe allora finito. Vi era un’aria nuova in Francesco. Non era più schiacciato, e ancor meno strisciante, per quanto riguardava suo padre; eppure le sue parole non indicano, credo, né giusta indignazione né gratuito insulto né alcunché nella natura di una mera continuazione della lite. Sono piuttosto remotamente affini alle misteriose parole del suo grande modello: «Che ho io a che fare con te?» o persino la terribile «Non mi toccare».
Si alzò dinanzi a tutti loro e disse: «Fino a questo momento ho chiamato padre Pietro Bernardone, ma ora sono il servo di Dio. Non solo il denaro, ma tutto ciò che può dirsi suo restituirò a mio padre, financo le vesti stesse che egli mi ha dato». E si strappò di dosso tutte le vesti tranne una; e videro che era un cilicio.
Ammucchiò le vesti in un mucchio sul pavimento e vi gettò sopra il denaro. Poi si volse al vescovo e ne ricevette la benedizione, come chi volge le spalle alla società; e, secondo il racconto, uscì così com’era nel mondo freddo. A quanto pare era letteralmente un mondo freddo in quel momento, e la neve era al suolo. Un particolare curioso, assai profondo nel suo significato, immagino, è dato nello stesso racconto di questa grande crisi della sua vita. Uscì seminudo nel suo cilicio nei boschi d’inverno, camminando sul suolo gelato tra gli alberi coperti di brina: un uomo senza padre. Era senza un soldo, era senza genitori, era a tutte le apparenze senza un mestiere o un piano o una speranza al mondo; e mentre andava sotto gli alberi brinati, proruppe d’un tratto in un canto.
A quanto pare fu notato come cosa notevole che la lingua in cui cantava fosse il francese, o quel provenzale che per comodità si chiamava francese. Non era la sua lingua nativa; e fu nella sua lingua nativa che in ultimo conquistò fama come poeta; anzi san Francesco è uno dei primissimi tra i poeti nazionali nei dialetti puramente nazionali d’Europa. Ma era la lingua con cui si erano identificati tutti i suoi più giovanili ardori e ambizioni; era per lui per eccellenza la lingua del romanzo cavalleresco. Che essa erompesse da lui in questa straordinaria estremità mi pare qualcosa a prima vista assai strano e, in ultima analisi, assai significativo. Quale fosse, o bene potesse essere, quel significato, cercherò di suggerirlo nel capitolo seguente; qui basta indicare che l’intera filosofia di san Francesco ruotava intorno all’idea di una nuova luce soprannaturale sulle cose naturali, il che significava il recupero ultimo, non il rifiuto ultimo, delle cose naturali. E per lo scopo di questa parte puramente narrativa della faccenda, basta registrare che mentre vagava nella foresta invernale nel suo cilicio, come il più selvaggio degli eremiti, cantava nella lingua dei Trovatori.
Meanwhile the narrative naturally reverts to the problem of the ruined or at least neglected church, which had been the starting point of the saint’s innocent crime and beatific punishment. That problem still predominated in his mind and was soon engaging his insatiable activities; but they were activities of a new sort; and he made no more attempts to interfere with commercial ethics of the town of Assisi. There had dawned on him one of those great paradoxes that are also platitudes. He realised that the way to build a church is not to become entangled in bargains and, to him, rather bewildering questions of legal claim. The way to build a church is not to pay for it, certainly not with somebody else’s money. The way to build a church is not to pay for it even with your own money. The way to build a church is to build it.
He went about by himself collecting stones. He begged all the people he met to give him stones. In fact he became a new sort of beggar, reversing the parable; a beggar who asks not for bread but stone. Probably, as happened to him again and again throughout his extraordinary existence, the very queerness of the request gave it a sort of popularity; and all sorts of idle and luxurious people fell in with the benevolent project, as they would have done with a bet. He worked with his own hands at the rebuilding of the church, dragging the material like a beast of burden and learning the very last and lowest lessons of toil. A vast number of stories are told about Francis at this as at every other period of his life; but for the purpose here, which is one of simplification, it is best to dwell on this definite re-entrance of the saint into the world by the low gate of physical labour. There does indeed run through the whole of his life a sort of double meaning, like his shadow thrown upon the wall. All his actions had something of the character of an allegory; and it is likely enough that some leaden-witted scientific historian may some day try to prove that he himself was never anything but an allegory. It is true enough in this sense that he was labouring at a double task, and rebuilding something else as well as the church of St. Damien. He was not only discovering the general lesson that his glory was not to be in overthrowing men in battle but in building up the positive and creative monuments of peace. He was truly building up something else, or beginning to build it up; something that has often enough fallen into ruin but has never been past rebuilding; a church that could always be built anew though it had rotted away to its first foundation stone, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.
The next stage in his progress is probably marked by his transferring the same energies of architectural reconstruction to the little church of St. Mary of the Angels at the Portiuncula. He had already done something of the same kind at a church dedicated to St. Peter; and that quality in his life noted above, which made it seem like a symbolical drama, led many of his most devout biographers to note the numerical symbolism of the three churches. There was at any rate a more historical and practical symbolism about two of them. For the original church of St. Damian afterwards became the seat of his striking experiment of a female order, and of the pure and spiritual romance of St. Clare. And the church of the Portiuncula will remain forever as one of the great historic buildings of the world; for it was here that he gathered the little knot of friends and enthusiasts; it was the home of many homeless men. At this time, however, it is not clear that he had the definite idea of any such monastic developments. How early the plan appeared in his own mind it is of course impossible to say; but on the face of events it first takes the form of a few friends who attached themselves to him one by one because they shared his own passion for simplicity. The account given of the form of their dedication is, however, significant; for it was that of an invocation of the simplification of life as suggested in the New Testament. The adoration of Christ had been a part of the man’s passionate nature for a long time past. But the imitation of Christ, as a sort of plan or ordered scheme of life, may in that sense may be said to begin here.
The two men who have the credit, apparently, of having first perceived something of what was happening in the world of the soul were a solid and wealthy citizen named Bernard of Quintaville and a canon from a neighbouring church named Peter. It is the more to their credit because Francis, if one may put it so, was by this time wallowing in poverty and association with lepers and ragged mendicants; and the two were men with much to give up; the one of comforts in the world and the other of ambition in the church. Bernard the rich burgher did quite literally and finally sell all he had and give it to the poor. Peter did even more; for he descended from a chair of spiritual authority, probably when he was already a man of mature years and therefore of fixed mental habits, to follow an extravagant young eccentric whom most people probably regarded as a maniac. What it was which they had caught a glimpse, of which Francis had seen the glory, may be suggested later so far as it can be suggested at all. At this stage we need profess to see no more than all Assisi saw, and that something not altogether unworthy of comment. The citizens of Assisi only saw the camel go in triumph through the eye of the needle and God do impossible things because to him all things were possible; only a priest who rent his robes like the Publican and not like the Pharisee and a rich man who went away joyful, for he had no possessions.
These three strange figures are said to have built themselves a sort of hut or den adjoining the leper hospital. There they talked to each other, in the intervals of drudgery and danger (for it needed ten times more courage to look after a leper than to fight for the crown of Sicily), in the terms of their new life, almost like children talking a secret language. Of these individual elements on their first friendship we can say little with certainty; but it is certain that they remained friends to the end. Bernard of Quintaville occupies in the story something of the position of Sir Bedivere, “first made and latest left of Arthur’s knights,” for he reappears at the right hand side of the saint on his deathbed and receives some sort of special blessing. But all these things belong to another historical world and were quite remote from the ragged and fantastic trio in their tumble-down hut. They were not monks except perhaps in the most literal and archaic sense which was identical with hermits. They were, so to speak, three solitaries living together socially, but not as a society. The whole thing seems to have been intensely individual, as seen from the outside doubtless individual to the point of insanity. The stir of something that had in it the promise of a movement or a mission can first be felt as I have said in the affair of the appeal to the New Testament.
Intanto la narrazione torna naturalmente al problema della chiesa in rovina, o quantomeno trascurata, che era stata il punto di partenza dell’innocente delitto del santo e della sua beatifica punizione. Quel problema predominava ancora nella sua mente e ben presto impegnava le sue insaziabili attività; ma erano attività di un genere nuovo; e non tentò più di interferire con l’etica commerciale della città di Assisi. Gli era balenato uno di quei grandi paradossi che sono anche luoghi comuni. Comprese che il modo di costruire una chiesa non è impigliarsi in contrattazioni e, per lui, in questioni piuttosto sconcertanti di rivendicazione legale. Il modo di costruire una chiesa non è pagarla, e di certo non con il denaro altrui. Il modo di costruire una chiesa non è pagarla nemmeno con il proprio denaro. Il modo di costruire una chiesa è costruirla.
Andava in giro da solo raccogliendo pietre. Supplicava tutte le persone che incontrava di dargli pietre. Divenne infatti un nuovo genere di mendicante, che rovesciava la parabola; un mendicante che chiede non pane ma pietra. Probabilmente, come gli accadde più e più volte nel corso della sua straordinaria esistenza, la stranezza stessa della richiesta le conferì una sorta di popolarità; e ogni genere di persone oziose e agiate si prestò al benevolo progetto, come avrebbero fatto per una scommessa. Lavorò con le proprie mani alla ricostruzione della chiesa, trascinando il materiale come una bestia da soma e apprendendo le ultime e più umili lezioni della fatica. Un gran numero di racconti si narra su Francesco in questo come in ogni altro periodo della sua vita; ma per lo scopo presente, che è di semplificazione, è meglio soffermarsi su questo netto rientro del santo nel mondo attraverso la bassa porta del lavoro fisico. Corre invero per tutta la sua vita una sorta di duplice significato, come la sua ombra proiettata sul muro. Tutte le sue azioni avevano qualcosa del carattere di un’allegoria; ed è assai probabile che qualche storico scientifico dalla mente ottusa tenti un giorno di dimostrare che egli stesso non fu mai altro che un’allegoria. È vero abbastanza, in questo senso, che egli si affaticava a un duplice compito, e ricostruiva qualcos’altro oltre alla chiesa di San Damiano. Non solo scopriva la lezione generale che la sua gloria non sarebbe consistita nell’abbattere gli uomini in battaglia ma nell’innalzare i monumenti positivi e creativi della pace. Stava davvero edificando qualcos’altro, o cominciando a edificarlo; qualcosa che assai spesso è caduto in rovina ma non è mai stato impossibile da ricostruire; una chiesa che poteva sempre essere edificata di nuovo per quanto fosse marcita fino alla sua prima pietra di fondazione, contro la quale le porte dell’inferno non prevarranno.
La tappa successiva del suo cammino è probabilmente segnata dal trasferimento delle medesime energie di ricostruzione architettonica alla piccola chiesa di Santa Maria degli Angeli alla Porziuncola. Aveva già fatto qualcosa di simile in una chiesa dedicata a San Pietro; e quella qualità della sua vita sopra rilevata, che la faceva sembrare un dramma simbolico, indusse molti dei suoi biografi più devoti a notare il simbolismo numerico delle tre chiese. Vi era in ogni caso un simbolismo più storico e pratico riguardo a due di esse. Poiché l’originaria chiesa di San Damiano divenne poi la sede del suo sorprendente esperimento di un ordine femminile, e della pura e spirituale storia d’amore di Santa Chiara. E la chiesa della Porziuncola rimarrà per sempre come uno dei grandi edifici storici del mondo; poiché fu qui che egli radunò il piccolo nucleo di amici ed entusiasti; fu la casa di molti uomini senza casa. In questo tempo, tuttavia, non è chiaro che egli avesse l’idea precisa di alcuno di tali sviluppi monastici. Quanto presto il disegno sia apparso nella sua mente è naturalmente impossibile dire; ma stando ai fatti esso prende dapprima la forma di pochi amici che si legarono a lui a uno a uno perché condividevano la sua stessa passione per la semplicità. Il resoconto che si dà della forma della loro dedizione è, tuttavia, significativo; poiché fu quello di un’invocazione della semplificazione della vita come suggerita nel Nuovo Testamento. L’adorazione di Cristo era stata parte della natura appassionata di quell’uomo per lungo tempo. Ma l’imitazione di Cristo, come una sorta di piano o schema ordinato di vita, in quel senso si può dire cominci qui.
I due uomini che hanno il merito, a quanto pare, di aver colto per primi qualcosa di ciò che stava accadendo nel mondo dell’anima furono un cittadino solido e facoltoso di nome Bernardo di Quintavalle e un canonico di una chiesa vicina di nome Pietro. Ciò va ancor più a loro credito perché Francesco, se così si può dire, a questo tempo si crogiolava nella povertà e nella compagnia dei lebbrosi e dei mendicanti cenciosi; e i due erano uomini con molto a cui rinunciare; l’uno alle comodità del mondo e l’altro all’ambizione nella chiesa. Bernardo, il ricco borghese, vendette letteralmente e definitivamente tutto ciò che possedeva e lo diede ai poveri. Pietro fece ancora di più; poiché discese da una cattedra di autorità spirituale, probabilmente quando era già uomo di età matura e perciò di abitudini mentali consolidate, per seguire uno stravagante giovane eccentrico che la maggior parte della gente considerava probabilmente un maniaco. Che cosa fosse ciò di cui essi avevano colto un barlume, e di cui Francesco aveva visto la gloria, potrà essere accennato più avanti, per quanto possa essere accennato. A questo stadio occorre professare di non vedere più di quanto vide tutta Assisi, e cioè qualcosa di non del tutto indegno di commento. I cittadini di Assisi videro soltanto il cammello passare in trionfo per la cruna dell’ago e Dio compiere cose impossibili perché a lui tutte le cose erano possibili; soltanto un prete che si stracciava le vesti come il Pubblicano e non come il Fariseo e un uomo ricco che se ne andò lieto, perché non aveva possedimenti.
Si narra che queste tre strane figure si costruirono una sorta di capanna o tana adiacente al lebbrosario. Là parlavano tra loro, negli intervalli della fatica e del pericolo (poiché occorreva dieci volte più coraggio per accudire un lebbroso che per combattere per la corona di Sicilia), nei termini della loro nuova vita, quasi come bambini che parlano una lingua segreta. Di questi singoli elementi al tempo della loro prima amicizia poco possiamo dire con certezza; ma è certo che rimasero amici fino alla fine. Bernardo di Quintavalle occupa nella storia qualcosa della posizione di Sir Bedivere, «primo creato e ultimo rimasto dei cavalieri di Artù», poiché riappare alla destra del santo sul suo letto di morte e riceve una sorta di benedizione speciale. Ma tutte queste cose appartengono a un altro mondo storico ed erano assai remote dal cencioso e fantastico trio nella loro capanna cadente. Non erano monaci se non forse nel senso più letterale e arcaico che era identico a eremiti. Erano, per così dire, tre solitari che vivevano insieme socialmente, ma non come una società. L’intera faccenda sembra essere stata intensamente individuale, vista dall’esterno senza dubbio individuale fino al punto della follia. Il fremito di qualcosa che aveva in sé la promessa di un movimento o di una missione si può avvertire per la prima volta, come ho detto, nella faccenda dell’appello al Nuovo Testamento.
It was a sort of sors vigiliana applied to the Bible; a practice not unknown among Protestants though open to their criticism, one would think, as being rather a superstition of pagans. Anyhow it seems almost the opposite of searching the Scriptures to open them at random; but St. Francis certainly opened them at random. According to one story, he merely made the sign of the cross over the volume of the Gospel and opened it at three places reading three texts. The first was the tale of the rich young man whose refusal to sell all his goods was the occasion of the great paradox about the camel and the needle. The second was the commandment to the disciples to take nothing with them on their journey, neither scrip nor staff nor any money. The third was that saying, literally to be called crucial, that the follower of Christ must also carry his cross. There is a somewhat similar story of St. Francis finding one of these texts, almost as accidentally, merely in listening to what happened to be the Gospel of the day. But from the former version at least it would seem that the incident occurred very early indeed in his new life; for it was after this oracle, apparently, that Bernard the first disciple rushed forth and scattered all his goods among the poor. If this be so, it would seem that nothing followed it for the moment except the individual ascetical life with the hut for a hermitage. It must of course have been a rather public sort of hermitage, but it was none the less in a very real sense withdrawn from the world. St. Simeon Stylites on the top of his pillar was in one sense an exceedingly public character; but there was something a little singular in his situation for all that. It must be presumed that most people thought the situation of Francis singular, that some even thought it too singular. There was inevitably indeed in any Catholic society something ultimate and even subconscious that was at least capable of comprehending it better than a pagan or puritan society could comprehend it. But we must not at this stage, I think, exaggerate this potential public sympathy. As has already been suggested, the Church and all its institutions had already the air of being old and settled and sensible things, the monastic institutions amongst the rest. Common sense was commoner in the Middle Ages, I think, than in our own rather jumpy journalistic age; but men like Francis are not common in any age, nor are they to be fully understood merely by the exercise of common sense. The thirteenth century was certainly a progressive period; perhaps the only really progressive period in human history. But it can truly be called progressive precisely because its progress was very orderly. It is really and truly an example of an epoch of reforms without revolutions. But the reforms were not only progressive but very practical; and they were very much to the advantage of highly practical institutions; the towns and the trading guilds and the manual crafts. Now the solid men of town and guild in the time of Francis of Assisi were probably very solid indeed. They were much more economically equal, they were much more justly governed in their own economic environment, than the moderns who struggle madly between starvation and the monopolist prizes of capitalism; but it likely enough that the majority of citizens were as hard-headed as peasants. Certainly the behaviour of the venerable Pietro Bernadone does not indicate a delicate sympathy with the fine and almost fanciful subtleties of the Franciscan spirit. And we cannot measure the beauty and originality of this strange spiritual adventure, unless we have the humour and human sympathy to put into plain words how it would have looked to such an unsympathetic person at the time when it happened. In the next chapter I shall make an attempt, inevitably inadequate, to indicate the inside of the story of the building of the three churches and the little hut. In this chapter I have but outlined it from the outside. And in concluding that chapter I ask the reader to remember and realize what the story really looked like, when thus seen from the outside. Given a critic of rather coarse common sense, with no feeling about the incident except annoyance, and how would the story seem to stand?
A young fool or rascal is caught robbing his father and selling goods which he ought to guard; and the only explanation he will offer is that a loud voice from nowhere spoke in his ear and told him to mend the cracks and holes in a particular wall. He then declared himself naturally independant of all powers corresponding to the police or magistrates, and takes refuge with an amiable bishop who is forced to remonstrate with him and tell him he is wrong. He then proceeds to take off his clothes in public and practically throw them at his father; announcing at the same time that his father is not his father at all. He then runs about the town asking everybody he meets to give him fragments of buildings or building materials, apparently with reference to his old monomania about mending the wall. It may be an excellent thing that cracks should be filled up, but preferably not by somebody who is himself cracked; and architectural restoration like other things is not best performed by builders who, as we should say, have a tile loose. Finally the wretched youth relapses into rags and squalor and practically crawls away into the gutter. That is the spectacle that Francis must have presented to a very large number of his neighbours and friends.
How he lived at all must have seemed to them dubious; but presumably he already begged for bread as he had begged for building materials. But he was always very careful to beg for the blackest or worst bread he could get, for the stalest crusts or something less luxurious than the crumbs which the dogs eat, and which fell from the rich man’s table. Thus he probably fared worse than an ordinary beggar; for the beggar would eat the best he could get and the saint ate the worst he could get. In plain fact he was ready to live on refuse; and it was probably something much uglier as an experience than the refined simplicity which vegetarians and water drinkers would call the simple life. As he dealt with the question of food, so he apparently dealt with the question of clothing. He dealt with it, that is, upon the same principle of taking what he could get, and not even the best of what he could get. According to one story he changed clothes with a beggar; and he would doubtless have been content to change them with a scarecrow. In another version he got hold of the rough brown tunic of a peasant, but presumably only because the peasant gave him his very oldest brown tunic, which was probably very old indeed. Most peasants have few changes of clothing to give away; and some peasants are not specially inclined to give them away unless absolutely necessary. It is said that in place of the girdle which he had flung off (perhaps with the more symbolic scorn because it probably carried the purse or wallet by the fashion of the period) he picked up a rope more or less at random, because it was lying near, and tied it round his waist. He undoubtedly meant it as a shabby expedient; rather as the very destitute tramp will sometimes tie his clothes together with a piece of string. He meant to strike the note of collecting his clothes anyway, like rags from a succession of dust bins. Ten years later that make-shift costume was the uniform of five thousand men; and a hundred years later, in that, for a pontifical panoply, they laid great Dante in the grave.
Era una sorta di sors vigiliana applicata alla Bibbia; una pratica non ignota tra i Protestanti benché esposta alla loro critica, si direbbe, in quanto piuttosto una superstizione dei pagani. In ogni caso sembra quasi il contrario dello scrutare le Scritture l’aprirle a caso; ma San Francesco le aprì di certo a caso. Secondo un racconto, egli fece semplicemente il segno della croce sul volume del Vangelo e lo aprì in tre punti leggendo tre testi. Il primo era il racconto del giovane ricco il cui rifiuto di vendere tutti i suoi beni fu l’occasione del grande paradosso sul cammello e la cruna. Il secondo era il comandamento ai discepoli di non prendere nulla con sé nel loro viaggio, né bisaccia né bastone né denaro. Il terzo era quel detto, letteralmente da dirsi cruciale, che il seguace di Cristo deve anche portare la propria croce. Vi è una storia in qualche modo simile di San Francesco che trova uno di questi testi, quasi altrettanto casualmente, semplicemente ascoltando quello che si dava essere il Vangelo del giorno. Ma dalla prima versione almeno sembrerebbe che l’episodio avvenne davvero assai presto nella sua nuova vita; poiché fu dopo questo oracolo, a quanto pare, che Bernardo il primo discepolo si slanciò fuori e disperse tutti i suoi beni fra i poveri. Se così è, sembrerebbe che per il momento nulla ne seguì tranne la vita ascetica individuale con la capanna per eremitaggio. Dev’essere stato naturalmente un eremitaggio piuttosto pubblico, ma non per questo meno, in un senso assai reale, ritirato dal mondo. San Simeone Stilita in cima alla sua colonna era in un certo senso un personaggio estremamente pubblico; ma vi era qualcosa di un poco singolare nella sua situazione, nonostante tutto. Si deve presumere che la maggior parte della gente giudicasse singolare la situazione di Francesco, che alcuni la giudicassero perfino troppo singolare. Vi era inevitabilmente, invero, in ogni società cattolica qualcosa di ultimo e persino di subconscio che era quantomeno capace di comprenderlo meglio di quanto potesse comprenderlo una società pagana o puritana. Ma non dobbiamo a questo stadio, io credo, esagerare questa potenziale simpatia pubblica. Come già si è suggerito, la Chiesa e tutte le sue istituzioni avevano già l’aria di essere cose vecchie, assestate e sensate, e fra le altre le istituzioni monastiche. Il buon senso era più comune nel Medioevo, io credo, che nella nostra epoca giornalistica piuttosto nervosa; ma uomini come Francesco non sono comuni in nessuna epoca, né si possono comprendere appieno con il solo esercizio del buon senso. Il tredicesimo secolo fu certamente un periodo progressivo; forse il solo periodo davvero progressivo nella storia umana. Ma può veramente dirsi progressivo proprio perché il suo progresso fu assai ordinato. È realmente e veramente un esempio di un’epoca di riforme senza rivoluzioni. Ma le riforme non furono soltanto progressive bensì molto pratiche; ed erano assai a vantaggio di istituzioni altamente pratiche; le città e le corporazioni di mercanti e i mestieri manuali. Ora gli uomini solidi della città e della corporazione al tempo di Francesco d’Assisi erano probabilmente assai solidi davvero. Erano molto più eguali economicamente, erano governati molto più giustamente nel loro proprio ambiente economico, dei moderni che si dibattono follemente tra la fame e i premi monopolistici del capitalismo; ma è assai probabile che la maggioranza dei cittadini fosse dura di testa quanto i contadini. Di certo il comportamento del venerabile Pietro Bernardone non indica una delicata simpatia per le fini e quasi fantasiose sottigliezze dello spirito francescano. E non possiamo misurare la bellezza e l’originalità di questa strana avventura spirituale, a meno di avere l’umorismo e la simpatia umana per esprimere in parole semplici come essa sarebbe apparsa a una persona così poco comprensiva al tempo in cui accadde. Nel prossimo capitolo tenterò, in modo inevitabilmente inadeguato, di indicare l’interno della storia della costruzione delle tre chiese e della piccola capanna. In questo capitolo l’ho soltanto abbozzata dall’esterno. E concludendo questo capitolo chiedo al lettore di ricordare e comprendere come la storia apparisse davvero, quando così vista dall’esterno. Dato un critico di buon senso piuttosto grossolano, senza alcun sentimento riguardo all’episodio se non il fastidio, come sembrerebbe reggersi la storia?
Un giovane folle o furfante viene colto a derubare il padre e a vendere merci che dovrebbe custodire; e l’unica spiegazione che offrirà è che una voce forte venuta dal nulla gli parlò all’orecchio e gli disse di riparare le crepe e i buchi in un certo muro. Egli si dichiara poi naturalmente indipendente da ogni potere corrispondente alla polizia o ai magistrati, e si rifugia presso un amabile vescovo che è costretto a rimproverarlo e a dirgli che ha torto. Procede quindi a togliersi le vesti in pubblico e praticamente a scagliarle contro il padre; annunciando nel medesimo tempo che suo padre non è affatto suo padre. Corre poi per la città chiedendo a chiunque incontri di dargli frammenti di edifici o materiali da costruzione, apparentemente in riferimento alla sua vecchia monomania del riparare il muro. Può essere cosa eccellente che le crepe vengano colmate, ma preferibilmente non da qualcuno che è egli stesso incrinato; e il restauro architettonico, come altre cose, non è compiuto al meglio da costruttori che, come diremmo, hanno una tegola fuori posto. Infine il misero giovane ricade negli stracci e nello squallore e praticamente striscia via nel rigagnolo. Questo è lo spettacolo che Francesco dovette presentare a un numero assai grande dei suoi vicini e amici.
Come vivesse dovette a loro sembrare dubbio; ma presumibilmente egli già mendicava il pane come aveva mendicato i materiali da costruzione. Ma era sempre molto attento a chiedere il pane più nero o peggiore che potesse ottenere, le croste più stantie o qualcosa di meno lussuoso delle briciole che i cani mangiano, e che cadevano dalla tavola del ricco. Così se la passava probabilmente peggio di un comune mendicante; poiché il mendicante mangerebbe il meglio che potesse ottenere e il santo mangiava il peggio che potesse ottenere. In parole povere era pronto a vivere di rifiuti; ed era probabilmente qualcosa di assai più brutto, come esperienza, della raffinata semplicità che i vegetariani e i bevitori d’acqua chiamerebbero la vita semplice. Come trattò la questione del cibo, così apparentemente trattò la questione del vestire. La trattò, cioè, secondo lo stesso principio di prendere ciò che poteva ottenere, e nemmeno il meglio di ciò che poteva ottenere. Secondo un racconto scambiò le vesti con un mendicante; e senza dubbio si sarebbe accontentato di scambiarle con uno spaventapasseri. In un’altra versione mise le mani sulla ruvida tunica bruna di un contadino, ma presumibilmente solo perché il contadino gli diede la sua tunica bruna più vecchia, che era probabilmente assai vecchia davvero. La maggior parte dei contadini ha pochi ricambi di vestiario da regalare; e alcuni contadini non sono particolarmente inclini a regalarli se non quando assolutamente necessario. Si dice che al posto della cintura che aveva gettato via (forse con maggiore scherno simbolico perché essa portava probabilmente la borsa o il portafogli secondo l’usanza del tempo) egli raccolse una corda più o meno a caso, perché giaceva lì vicino, e se la legò intorno alla vita. Senza dubbio la intendeva come un misero espediente; piuttosto come il vagabondo del tutto indigente talvolta si tiene insieme le vesti con un pezzo di spago. Egli intendeva dare la nota di raccogliere comunque le sue vesti, come stracci da una successione di pattumiere. Dieci anni dopo quel costume improvvisato era l’uniforme di cinquemila uomini; e cent’anni dopo, in esso, come paludamento pontificale, deposero il grande Dante nella tomba.
CHAPTER V
LE JONGLEUR DE DIEU
Many signs and symbols might yet be used to give a hint of what really happened in the mind of the young poet of Assisi. Indeed they are at once too numerous for selection and yet too slight for satisfaction. But one of them may be adumbrated in this small and apparently accidental fact; that when he and his secular companions carried their pageant of poetry through the town, they called themselves Troubadours. But when he and his spiritual companions came out to do their spiritual work in the world, they were called by their leader the Jongleurs de Dieu.
Nothing has been said here at any length of the great culture of the Troubadours as it appeared in Provence or Languedoc, great as was their influence in history and their influence on St. Francis. Something more May be said of them when we come to summarise his relation to history; it is enough to note here in a few sentences the facts about them that were relevant to him, and especially the particular point now in question, which was the most relevant of all. Everybody knows who the Troubadours were; everybody knows that very early in the Middle Ages, in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, there arose a civilisation in Southern France which threatened to rival or eclipse the rising tradition of Paris. Its chief product was a school of poetry, or rather more especially a school of poets. They were primarily love-poets, though they were often also satirists and critics of things in general. Their picturesque posture in history is largely due to the fact that they sang their own poems and often played their own accompaniments, on the light musical instruments of the period; they were minstrels as well as men of letters. Allied to their love-poetry were other institutions of a decorative and fanciful kind concerned with the same theme. There was what was called the “Gay Science,” the attempt to reduce to a sort of system the fine shades of flirtation and philandering. There were the things called Courts of Love, in which the same delicate subjects were dealt with legal pomp and pedantry. There is one point in this part of the business that must be remembered in relation to St. Francis. There were manifest moral dangers in all this superb sentimentalism; but it is a mistake to suppose that its only danger of exaggeration was in the direction of sensualism. There was a strain in the southern romance that was actually an excess of spirituality; just as the pessimist heresy it produced was in one sense an excess of spirituality. The love was not always animal; sometimes it was so airy as to be almost allegorical. The reader realises that the lady is the most beautiful being that can possibly exist, only he has occasional doubts as to whether she does exist. Dante owed something to the Troubadours; and the critical debates about his ideal woman are an excellent example of these doubts. We know that Beatrice was not his wife, but we should in any case be equally sure she was not his mistress; and some critics have even suggested that she was nothing at all, so to speak, except his muse. This idea of Beatrice as an allegorical figure is, I believe, unsound; it would seem unsound to any man who has read the Vit Nuova and has been in love. But the very fact that it is possible to suggest it illustrates something abstract and scholastic in these medieval passions. But though they were abstract passions they were very passionate passions. These men could feel almost like lovers, even about allegories and abstractions. It is necessary to realise that St. Francis was talking the true language of a troubadour when he said that he also had a most glorious and gracious lady and that her name was poverty.
But the particular point to be noted here is not concerned so much with the word Troubadour as with the word Jongleur. It is especially concerned with the transition from one to the other; and for this it is necessary to grasp another detail about the poets of the Gay Science. A jongleur was not the same thing as a troubadour, even if the same man were both a troubadour and a jongleur. More often, I believe, they were separate men as well as separate trades. In many cases, apparently the two men would walk the world together like companions in arms, or rather companions in arts. The jongleur was properly a joculator or jester; sometimes he was what we should call a juggler. This is the point, I imagine, of the tale about Taillifer the Jongleur at the Battle of Hastings, who sang the death of Roland while he tossed up his sword and caught it, as a juggler catches balls. Sometimes he may been even a tumbler; like that acrobat in the beautiful legend who was called “The Tumbler of Our Lady,” because he turned head over heels and stood on his head before the image of the Blessed Virgin, for which he was nobly thanked and comforted by her and the whole company of heaven. In the ordinary way, we may imagine, the troubadour would exalt the company with earnest and solemn strains of love and then the jongleur would do his turn as a sort as a sort of comic relief. A glorious medieval romance remains to be written about two such companions wandering through the world. At any rate, if there is one place in which the Franciscan spirit can be found outside the true Franciscan story, it is in the tale of the Tumbler of our Lady. And when St. Francis called his followers the Jongleurs de Dieu, he meant something very like the Tumblers of our Lady.
Somewhere in that transition from the ambition of the Troubadour to the antics of the Tumbler is hidden, as under a parable, the truth of St. Francis. Of the two minstrels or entertainers, the jester was presumably the servant or at least the secondary figure. St. Francis really meant what he said when he said he had found the secret of life in being the servant and the secondary figure. There was to be found ultimately in such service a freedom almost amounting to frivolity. It was comparable to the condition of the jongleur because it almost amounted to frivolity. The jester could be free when the knight was rigid; and it was possible to be a jester in the service which is perfect freedom. This parallel of the two poets or minstrels is perhaps the best preliminary and external statement of the Franciscan change of heart, being conceived under an image with which the imagination of the modern world has a certain sympathy. There was, of course, a great deal more than this involved; and we must endeavour however insufficiently to penetrate past the image to the idea. It is so far like the tumblers that it is really to many people a topsy-turvy idea.
CAPITOLO V
LE JONGLEUR DE DIEU
Molti segni e simboli si potrebbero ancora usare per dare un accenno di ciò che davvero accadde nella mente del giovane poeta di Assisi. In verità sono al contempo troppo numerosi per una scelta eppure troppo tenui per una soddisfazione. Ma uno di essi si può adombrare in questo piccolo e apparentemente accidentale fatto; che quando egli e i suoi compagni secolari portavano il loro corteo di poesia per la città, si chiamavano Trovatori. Ma quando egli e i suoi compagni spirituali uscirono a compiere la loro opera spirituale nel mondo, furono chiamati dal loro capo i Jongleurs de Dieu.
Nulla si è detto qui diffusamente della grande cultura dei Trovatori quale apparve in Provenza o in Linguadoca, per quanto grande fosse la loro influenza nella storia e la loro influenza su San Francesco. Qualcosa di più si potrà dire di loro quando verremo a riassumere il suo rapporto con la storia; qui basta annotare in poche frasi i fatti che li riguardano e che erano rilevanti per lui, e specialmente il punto particolare ora in questione, che era il più rilevante di tutti. Tutti sanno chi furono i Trovatori; tutti sanno che assai presto nel Medioevo, nel dodicesimo e nel primo tredicesimo secolo, sorse nella Francia meridionale una civiltà che minacciava di rivaleggiare con o eclissare la nascente tradizione di Parigi. Il suo prodotto principale fu una scuola di poesia, o piuttosto più propriamente una scuola di poeti. Erano anzitutto poeti d’amore, benché fossero spesso anche satirici e critici delle cose in generale. La loro posizione pittoresca nella storia è in gran parte dovuta al fatto che cantavano i propri poemi e spesso suonavano i propri accompagnamenti, sui leggeri strumenti musicali dell’epoca; erano menestrelli oltre che uomini di lettere. Alleate alla loro poesia d’amore erano altre istituzioni di genere decorativo e fantasioso che riguardavano il medesimo tema. Vi era ciò che si chiamava la «Gaia Scienza», il tentativo di ridurre a una sorta di sistema le fini sfumature del corteggiamento e del flirt. Vi erano le cose chiamate Corti d’Amore, in cui i medesimi delicati soggetti erano trattati con pompa e pedanteria legale. Vi è un punto in questa parte della faccenda che va ricordato in relazione a San Francesco. Vi erano manifesti pericoli morali in tutto questo superbo sentimentalismo; ma è un errore supporre che il suo solo pericolo di esagerazione fosse nella direzione del sensualismo. Vi era nel romanticismo meridionale una vena che era in realtà un eccesso di spiritualità; proprio come l’eresia pessimista che esso produsse era in un certo senso un eccesso di spiritualità. L’amore non era sempre animale; talvolta era così etereo da essere quasi allegorico. Il lettore comprende che la dama è l’essere più bello che possa esistere, solo che ha occasionali dubbi sul fatto che essa esista. Dante doveva qualcosa ai Trovatori; e i dibattiti critici intorno alla sua donna ideale sono un eccellente esempio di questi dubbi. Sappiamo che Beatrice non fu sua moglie, ma dovremmo in ogni caso essere altrettanto certi che non fu la sua amante; e alcuni critici hanno perfino suggerito che ella non fu nulla, per così dire, se non la sua musa. Questa idea di Beatrice come figura allegorica è, io credo, infondata; parrebbe infondata a ogni uomo che abbia letto la Vita Nuova e sia stato innamorato d’amore. Ma il fatto stesso che sia possibile suggerirla illustra qualcosa di astratto e scolastico in queste passioni medievali. Ma benché fossero passioni astratte erano passioni molto appassionate. Questi uomini potevano provare sentimenti quasi da innamorati, perfino verso allegorie e astrazioni. È necessario comprendere che San Francesco parlava il vero linguaggio di un trovatore quando disse che anch’egli aveva una dama gloriosissima e graziosissima e che il suo nome era Povertà.
Ma il punto particolare da notare qui non riguarda tanto la parola Trovatore quanto la parola Jongleur. Riguarda specialmente il passaggio dall’una all’altra; e per questo è necessario cogliere un altro dettaglio sui poeti della Gaia Scienza. Un jongleur non era la stessa cosa di un trovatore, anche se il medesimo uomo era tanto trovatore quanto jongleur. Più spesso, io credo, erano uomini distinti oltre che mestieri distinti. In molti casi, a quanto pare, i due uomini percorrevano il mondo insieme come compagni d’armi, o piuttosto compagni d’arti. Il jongleur era propriamente un joculator o buffone; talvolta era ciò che chiameremmo un giocoliere. È questo, immagino, il senso del racconto su Taillifer il Jongleur alla Battaglia di Hastings, che cantava la morte di Orlando mentre lanciava in aria la sua spada e la riprendeva, come un giocoliere riprende le palle. Talvolta poteva essere anche un saltimbanco; come quell’acrobata della bella leggenda che era chiamato «Il Giocoliere di Nostra Signora», perché faceva capriole e stava a testa in giù davanti all’immagine della Beata Vergine, per cui fu nobilmente ringraziato e confortato da lei e dall’intera schiera del cielo. Nel modo consueto, possiamo immaginare, il trovatore avrebbe esaltato la compagnia con seri e solenni accenti d’amore e poi il jongleur avrebbe fatto la sua parte come una sorta di sollievo comico. Un glorioso romanzo medievale resta da scrivere su due tali compagni erranti per il mondo. In ogni caso, se c’è un luogo in cui lo spirito francescano si può trovare fuori dalla vera storia francescana, è nel racconto del Giocoliere di Nostra Signora. E quando San Francesco chiamò i suoi seguaci i Jongleurs de Dieu, intendeva qualcosa di molto simile ai Giocolieri di Nostra Signora.
Da qualche parte in quel passaggio dall’ambizione del Trovatore alle buffonerie del Giocoliere si cela, come sotto una parabola, la verità di San Francesco. Dei due menestrelli o intrattenitori, il buffone era presumibilmente il servo o quantomeno la figura secondaria. San Francesco intendeva davvero ciò che disse quando disse di aver trovato il segreto della vita nell’essere il servo e la figura secondaria. In tale servizio si trovava in ultimo una libertà quasi confinante con la frivolezza. Era paragonabile alla condizione del jongleur perché quasi confinava con la frivolezza. Il buffone poteva essere libero quando il cavaliere era rigido; ed era possibile essere un buffone nel servizio che è perfetta libertà. Questo parallelo dei due poeti o menestrelli è forse la migliore enunciazione preliminare ed esterna del mutamento di cuore francescano, essendo concepito sotto un’immagine con cui l’immaginazione del mondo moderno ha una certa simpatia. Vi era, naturalmente, assai più di questo in gioco; e dobbiamo sforzarci, per quanto insufficientemente, di penetrare oltre l’immagine fino all’idea. È fin qui simile ai giocolieri al punto che è davvero, per molti, un’idea a rovescio.
Francis, at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind; which was really like the reversal of a complete somersault, in that by coming full circle it came back, or apparently came back, to the same normal posture. It is necessary to use the grotesque simile of an acrobatic antic, because there is hardly any other figure that will make the fact clear. But in the inward sense it was a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the effects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as extravagant as any parallel can make them. He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands.
If we apply this parable of Our Lady’s Tumbler to the case, we shall come very near to the point of it. Now it really is a fact that any scene such as a landscape can sometimes be more clearly and freshly seen if it is seen upside down. There have been landscape-painters who adopted the most startling and pantomimic postures in order to look at it for a moment in that fashion. Thus that inverted vision, so much more bright and quaint and arresting, does bear a certain resemblance to the world which a mystic like St. Francis sees every day. But herein is the essential part of the parable. Our Lady’s Tumbler did not stand on his head in order to see flowers and trees as a clearer or quainter vision. He did not do so; and it would never have occurred to him to do so. Our Lady’s Tumbler stood on his head to please Our Lady. If St. Francis had done the same thing, as he was quite capable of doing, it would originally have been from the same motive; a motive of a purely supernatural thought. It would be after this that his enthusiasm would extend itself and give a sort of halo to the edges of all earthly things. This is why it is not true to represent St. Francis as a mere romantic forerunner of the Renaissance and a revival of natural pleasures for their own sake. The whole point of him was that the secret of recovering the natural pleasures lay in regarding them in the light of a supernatural pleasure. In other words, he repeated in his own person that historic process noted in the introductory chapter; the vigil of asceticism which ends in the vision of a natural world made new. But in the personal case there was even more than this; there were elements that make the parallel of the Jongleur or Tumbler even more appropriate than this.
It may be suspected that in that black cell or cave Francis passed the blackest hours of his life. By nature he was the sort of man who has that vanity which is the opposite of pride; that vanity which is very near to humility. He never despised his fellow creatures and therefore he never despised the opinion of his fellow creatures; including the admiration of his fellow creatures. All that part of his human nature had suffered the heaviest and most crushing blows. It is possible that after his humiliating return from his frustrated military campaign he was called a coward. It is certain that after his quarrel with his father about the bales of cloth he was called a thief. And even those who had sympathised most with him, the priest whose church he had restored, the bishop whose blessing he had received, had evidently treated him with an almost humorous amiability which left only too clear the ultimate conclusion of the matter. He had made a fool of himself. Any man who has been young, who has ridden horses or thought himself ready for a fight, who has fancied himself as a troubadour and accepted the conventions of comradeship, will appreciate the ponderous and crushing weight of that simple phrase. The conversion of St. Francis, like the conversion of St. Paul, involved his being in some sense flung suddenly from a horse; but in a sense it was an even worse fall; for it was a war-horse. Anyhow, there was not a rag of him left that was not ridiculous. Everybody knew that at the best he had made a fool of himself. It was a solid objective fact, like the stones in the road, that he had made a fool of himself. He saw himself as an object, very small and distinct like a fly walking on a clear window pane; and it was unmistakably a fool. And as he stared at the word “fool” written in luminous letters before him, the word itself began to shine and change.
We used to be told in the nursery that if a man were to bore a hole through the centre of the earth and climb continually down and down, there would come a moment at the centre when he would seem to be climbing up and up. I do not know whether this is true. The reason I do not know whether it is true is that I never happened to bore a hole through the centre of the earth, still less to crawl through it. If I do not know what this reversal or inversion feels like, it is because I have never been there. And this also is an allegory. It is certain that the writer, it is even possible that the reader, is an ordinary person who has never been there. We cannot follow St. Francis to that final spiritual overturn in which complete humiliation becomes complete holiness or happiness, because we have never been there. I for one do not profess to follow it any further than that first breaking down of the romantic barricades of boyish vanity, which I have suggested in the last paragraph. And even that paragraph, of course, is merely conjectural, an individual guess at what he may have felt; but he may have felt something quite different. But whatever else it was, it was so far analogous to the story of the man making a tunnel through the earth that it did mean a man going down and down until at some mysterious moment he begins to go up and up. We have never gone up like that because we have never gone down like that; we are obviously incapable of saying that it does not happen; and the more candidly and calmly we read human history, and especially the history of the wisest men, the more we shall come to the conclusion that it does happen. Of the intrinsic internal essence of the experience, I make no pretence of writing at all. But the external effect of it, for the purpose of this narrative, may be expressed by saying that when Francis came forth from his cave of vision, he was wearing the same word “fool” as a feather in his cap; as a crest or even a crown. He would go on being a fool; he would become more and more of a fool; he would be the court fool of the King of Paradise.
Francesco, al tempo o pressappoco al tempo in cui scomparve nella prigione o nella caverna oscura, subì un rovesciamento di una certa specie psicologica; che era davvero simile al rovesciamento di una capriola completa, in quanto compiendo l’intero giro tornava, o apparentemente tornava, alla medesima postura normale. È necessario usare la grottesca similitudine di una buffonata acrobatica, perché non vi è quasi alcun’altra immagine che renda chiaro il fatto. Ma nel senso interiore fu una profonda rivoluzione spirituale. L’uomo che entrò nella caverna non era l’uomo che ne uscì di nuovo; in quel senso era quasi tanto diverso come se fosse morto, come se fosse un fantasma o uno spirito beato. E gli effetti di ciò sul suo atteggiamento verso il mondo reale erano davvero tanto stravaganti quanto ogni paragone possa renderli. Guardava il mondo in modo tanto diverso dagli altri uomini come se fosse uscito da quel buco oscuro camminando sulle mani.
Se applichiamo questa parabola del Giocoliere di Nostra Signora al caso, ci avvicineremo assai al suo nocciolo. Ora è davvero un fatto che qualsiasi scena, come un paesaggio, possa talvolta essere vista più chiaramente e freschamente se è vista a rovescio. Vi sono stati paesaggisti che adottarono le pose più sorprendenti e da pantomima per guardarlo un momento in quel modo. Così quella visione capovolta, tanto più luminosa e curiosa e avvincente, reca invero una certa somiglianza con il mondo che un mistico come San Francesco vede ogni giorno. Ma qui sta la parte essenziale della parabola. Il Giocoliere di Nostra Signora non stava a testa in giù per vedere fiori e alberi come una visione più chiara o più curiosa. Non lo faceva; e non gli sarebbe mai venuto in mente di farlo. Il Giocoliere di Nostra Signora stava a testa in giù per compiacere Nostra Signora. Se San Francesco avesse fatto la stessa cosa, come era ben capace di fare, lo avrebbe fatto in origine per il medesimo motivo; un motivo di un pensiero puramente soprannaturale. Sarebbe stato dopo questo che il suo entusiasmo si sarebbe esteso e avrebbe dato una sorta di aureola ai margini di tutte le cose terrene. Ecco perché non è vero rappresentare San Francesco come un mero precursore romantico del Rinascimento e una rinascita dei piaceri naturali fine a sé stessi. Tutto il suo senso stava nel fatto che il segreto di recuperare i piaceri naturali risiedeva nel considerarli alla luce di un piacere soprannaturale. In altre parole, egli ripeté nella propria persona quel processo storico rilevato nel capitolo introduttivo; la veglia dell’ascetismo che si conclude nella visione di un mondo naturale reso nuovo. Ma nel caso personale vi era ancor più di questo; vi erano elementi che rendono il parallelo del Jongleur o Giocoliere ancor più appropriato di questo.
Si può sospettare che in quella cella nera o caverna Francesco passò le ore più nere della sua vita. Per natura era il tipo d’uomo che ha quella vanità che è l’opposto dell’orgoglio; quella vanità che è assai vicina all’umiltà. Non disprezzò mai i suoi simili e perciò non disprezzò mai l’opinione dei suoi simili; compresa l’ammirazione dei suoi simili. Tutta quella parte della sua natura umana aveva subìto i colpi più pesanti e schiaccianti. È possibile che dopo il suo umiliante ritorno dalla sua fallita campagna militare fosse chiamato codardo. È certo che dopo la sua lite col padre riguardo alle balle di stoffa fu chiamato ladro. E persino coloro che più avevano simpatizzato con lui, il prete la cui chiesa aveva restaurato, il vescovo la cui benedizione aveva ricevuto, lo avevano evidentemente trattato con un’amabilità quasi divertita che lasciava fin troppo chiara la conclusione ultima della faccenda. Aveva fatto di sé uno sciocco. Ogni uomo che sia stato giovane, che abbia cavalcato o si sia creduto pronto a battersi, che si sia immaginato trovatore e abbia accettato le convenzioni del cameratismo, apprezzerà il peso ponderoso e schiacciante di quella semplice frase. La conversione di San Francesco, come la conversione di San Paolo, comportò il suo essere in qualche senso scagliato all’improvviso da un cavallo; ma in un certo senso fu una caduta anche peggiore; poiché era un cavallo da guerra. In ogni caso, non gli restava un solo brandello che non fosse ridicolo. Tutti sapevano che, nel migliore dei casi, aveva fatto di sé uno sciocco. Era un fatto oggettivo e solido, come le pietre sulla strada, che aveva fatto di sé uno sciocco. Vedeva sé stesso come un oggetto, molto piccolo e distinto come una mosca che cammina su un limpido vetro di finestra; ed era inequivocabilmente uno sciocco. E mentre fissava la parola «sciocco» scritta in lettere luminose davanti a sé, la parola stessa cominciò a splendere e a mutare.
Ci raccontavano da bambini che se un uomo scavasse un foro attraverso il centro della terra e scendesse continuamente giù e giù, verrebbe un momento, al centro, in cui gli sembrerebbe di salire su e su. Non so se questo sia vero. La ragione per cui non so se sia vero è che non mi è mai capitato di scavare un foro attraverso il centro della terra, e ancor meno di strisciarvi attraverso. Se non so che sensazione dia questo rovesciamento o inversione, è perché non ci sono mai stato. E anche questa è un’allegoria. È certo che lo scrittore, ed è persino possibile che il lettore, è una persona comune che non c’è mai stata. Non possiamo seguire San Francesco fino a quel rovesciamento spirituale finale in cui la completa umiliazione diventa completa santità o felicità, perché non ci siamo mai stati. Io per primo non pretendo di seguirlo più oltre di quel primo crollo delle barricate romantiche della vanità giovanile, che ho suggerito nell’ultimo paragrafo. E anche quel paragrafo, naturalmente, è meramente congetturale, una supposizione individuale su ciò che egli può aver sentito; ma può aver sentito qualcosa di assai diverso. Ma qualunque altra cosa fosse, era fin qui analogo alla storia dell’uomo che scava un tunnel attraverso la terra al punto da significare davvero un uomo che scende giù e giù finché a un misterioso momento comincia a salire su e su. Noi non siamo mai saliti così perché non siamo mai scesi così; siamo evidentemente incapaci di dire che ciò non accade; e quanto più candidamente e calmamente leggiamo la storia umana, e specialmente la storia degli uomini più saggi, tanto più giungeremo alla conclusione che accade. Dell’intrinseca essenza interiore dell’esperienza, non pretendo affatto di scrivere. Ma l’effetto esterno di essa, ai fini di questa narrazione, si può esprimere dicendo che quando Francesco uscì dalla sua caverna di visione, portava la stessa parola «sciocco» come una piuma sul berretto; come un cimiero o persino una corona. Avrebbe continuato a essere uno sciocco; sarebbe divenuto sempre più uno sciocco; sarebbe stato il buffone di corte del Re del Paradiso.
This state can only be represented in symbol; but the symbol of inversion is true in another way. If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasise the idea of dependence. There is a Latin and literal connection; for the very word dependence only means hanging. It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hung the world upon nothing. If St. Francis had seen, in one of his strange dreams, the town of Assisi upside down, it need not have differed in a single detail from itself except in being entirely the other way round. But the point is this: that whereas to the normal eye the large masonry of its walls or the massive foundations of its watchtowers and its high citadel would make it seem safer and more permanent, the moment it was turned over the very same weight would make it seem more helpless and more in peril. It is but a symbol; but it happens to fit the psychological fact. St. Francis might love his little town as much as before, or more than before; but the nature of the love would be altered even in being increased. He might see and love every tile on the steep roofs or every bird on the battlements; but he would see them all in a new and divine light of eternal danger and dependence. Instead of being merely proud of his strong city because it could not be moved, he would be thankful to God Almighty that it had not been dropped; he would be thankful to God for not dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling stars. Perhaps St. Peter saw the world so, when he was crucified head-downwards.
It is commonly in a somewhat cynical sense that men have said, “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.” It was in a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that St. Francis said, “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.” It was by this deliberate idea of starting from zero, from the dark nothingness of his own deserts, that he did come to enjoy even earthly things as few people have enjoyed them; and they are in themselves the best working example of the idea. For there is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset. But there is more than this involved, and more indeed than is easily to be expressed in words. It is not only true that the less a man thinks of himself, the more he thinks of his good luck and of all the gifts of God. It is also true that he sees more of the things themselves when he sees more of their origin; for their origin is a part of them and indeed the most important part of them. Thus they become more extraordinary by being explained. He has more wonder at them but less fear of them; for a thing is really wonderful when it is significant and not when it is insignificant; and a monster, shapeless or dumb or merely destructive, may be larger than the mountains, but is still in a literal sense insignificant. For a mystic like St. Francis the monsters had a meaning; that is, they had delivered their message. They spoke no longer in an unknown tongue. That is the meaning of all those stories whether legendary or historical, in which he appears as a magician speaking the language of beasts and birds. The mystic will have nothing to do with mere mystery; mere mystery is generally a mystery of iniquity.
The transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate and illuminate God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates all things. It is rather like the reversal whereby a lover might say at first sight that a lady looked like a flower, and say afterwards that all flowers reminded him of his lady. A saint and a poet standing by the same flower might seem to say the same thing; but indeed though they would both be telling the truth, they would be telling different truths. For one the joy of life is a cause of faith, for the other rather a result of faith. But one effect of the difference is that the sense of a divine dependence, which for the artist is like the brilliant levin-blaze, for the saint is like the broad daylight. Being in some mystical sense on the other side of things, he sees things go forth from the divine as children going forth from a familiar and accepted home, instead of meeting them as they come out, as most of us do, upon the roads of the world. And it is the paradox that by this privilege he is more familiar, more free and fraternal, more carelessly hospitable than we. For us the elements are like heralds who tell us with trumpet and tabard that we are drawing near the city of a great king; but he hails them with an old familiarity that is almost an old frivolity. He calls them his Brother Fire and his Sister Water.
So arises out of this almost nihilistic abyss the noble thing that is called Praise; which no one will ever understand while he identifies it with nature-worship or pantheistic optimism. When we say that a poet praises the whole creation, we commonly mean only that he praises the whole cosmos. But this sort of poet does really praise creation, in the sense of the act of creation. He praises the passage or transition from nonentity to entity; there falls here also the shadow of that archetypal image of the bridge, which has given to the priest his archaic and mysterious name. The mystic who passes through the moment when there is nothing but God does in some sense behold the beginningless beginnings in which there was really nothing else. He not only appreciates everything but the nothing of which everything was made. In a fashion he endures and answers even the earthquake irony of the Book of Job; in some sense he is there when the foundations of the world are laid, with the morning stars singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy. That is but a distant adumbration of the reason why the Franciscan, ragged, penniless, homeless and apparently hopeless, did indeed come forth singing such songs as might come from the stars of morning; and shouting, a son of God.
Questo stato può essere rappresentato soltanto in simbolo; ma il simbolo dell’inversione è vero in un altro modo. Se un uomo vedesse il mondo capovolto, con tutti gli alberi e le torri pendenti a testa in giù come in uno stagno, un effetto sarebbe di dare risalto all’idea della dipendenza. Vi è un nesso latino e letterale; poiché la parola stessa dipendenza significa soltanto pendere. Renderebbe vivo il testo scritturale che dice che Dio ha appeso il mondo sul nulla. Se San Francesco avesse visto, in uno dei suoi strani sogni, la città di Assisi capovolta, essa non avrebbe dovuto differire in un solo dettaglio da sé stessa se non nell’essere interamente rovesciata. Ma il punto è questo: che mentre all’occhio normale la grande muratura delle sue mura o le massicce fondamenta delle sue torri di guardia e la sua alta cittadella la farebbero sembrare più sicura e più permanente, nel momento in cui fosse ribaltata quel medesimo peso la farebbe sembrare più indifesa e più in pericolo. Non è che un simbolo; ma si dà il caso che si adatti al fatto psicologico. San Francesco poteva amare la sua piccola città quanto prima, o più di prima; ma la natura dell’amore sarebbe stata alterata perfino nell’essere accresciuta. Poteva vedere e amare ogni tegola sui ripidi tetti o ogni uccello sui merli; ma li avrebbe visti tutti in una nuova e divina luce di eterno pericolo e dipendenza. Invece di essere semplicemente fiero della sua forte città perché non poteva essere smossa, sarebbe stato grato a Dio Onnipotente che essa non fosse stata lasciata cadere; sarebbe stato grato a Dio per non aver lasciato cadere l’intero cosmo come un vasto cristallo da frantumarsi in stelle cadenti. Forse San Pietro vide il mondo così, quando fu crocifisso a testa in giù.
È comunemente in un senso alquanto cinico che gli uomini hanno detto: «Beato colui che nulla si aspetta, poiché non sarà deluso». Fu in un senso del tutto lieto ed entusiasta che San Francesco disse: «Beato colui che nulla si aspetta, poiché godrà di ogni cosa». Fu per questa deliberata idea di partire da zero, dal nero nulla dei propri meriti, che egli giunse a godere perfino delle cose terrene come poche persone le hanno godute; ed esse sono in sé stesse il miglior esempio concreto dell’idea. Poiché non vi è modo in cui un uomo possa guadagnarsi una stella o meritare un tramonto. Ma vi è in gioco più di questo, e in verità più di quanto sia facile esprimere a parole. Non solo è vero che quanto meno un uomo pensa a sé stesso, tanto più pensa alla propria buona sorte e a tutti i doni di Dio. È anche vero che egli vede di più le cose stesse quando ne vede di più l’origine; poiché la loro origine è una parte di esse e invero la parte più importante di esse. Così esse divengono più straordinarie per l’essere spiegate. Egli ha più meraviglia per esse ma meno paura di esse; poiché una cosa è davvero meravigliosa quando è significativa e non quando è insignificante; e un mostro, informe o muto o meramente distruttivo, può essere più grande delle montagne, ma è pur sempre, in senso letterale, insignificante. Per un mistico come San Francesco i mostri avevano un significato; cioè, avevano recato il loro messaggio. Non parlavano più in una lingua sconosciuta. Questo è il significato di tutte quelle storie, leggendarie o storiche, in cui egli appare come un mago che parla la lingua delle bestie e degli uccelli. Il mistico non vuole avere nulla a che fare con il mero mistero; il mero mistero è generalmente un mistero d’iniquità.
Il passaggio dall’uomo buono al santo è una sorta di rivoluzione; per cui colui per il quale tutte le cose illustrano e illuminano Dio diviene colui per il quale Dio illustra e illumina tutte le cose. È piuttosto simile al rovesciamento per cui un amante potrebbe dire a prima vista che una dama sembrava un fiore, e dire in seguito che tutti i fiori gli ricordavano la sua dama. Un santo e un poeta accanto al medesimo fiore potrebbero sembrare dire la stessa cosa; ma invero, benché entrambi direbbero la verità, direbbero verità diverse. Per l’uno la gioia della vita è causa di fede, per l’altro piuttosto un risultato della fede. Ma un effetto della differenza è che il senso di una dipendenza divina, che per l’artista è come il brillante lampo del fulmine, per il santo è come la piena luce del giorno. Essendo in qualche senso mistico dall’altra parte delle cose, egli vede le cose uscire dal divino come bambini che escono da una casa familiare e accolta, invece di incontrarle mentre escono, come fa la maggior parte di noi, sulle strade del mondo. Ed è il paradosso che per questo privilegio egli è più familiare, più libero e fraterno, più incuriosamente ospitale di noi. Per noi gli elementi sono come araldi che ci annunciano con tromba e tabarro che ci stiamo avvicinando alla città di un grande re; ma egli li saluta con un’antica familiarità che è quasi un’antica frivolezza. Li chiama suo Fratello Fuoco e sua Sorella Acqua.
Così sorge da questo abisso quasi nichilistico la cosa nobile che è chiamata Lode; che nessuno comprenderà mai finché la identifica con il culto della natura o con l’ottimismo panteistico. Quando diciamo che un poeta loda l’intera creazione, comunemente intendiamo soltanto che egli loda l’intero cosmo. Ma questo genere di poeta loda davvero la creazione, nel senso dell’atto della creazione. Egli loda il passaggio o transito dal non-essere all’essere; cade qui anche l’ombra di quell’immagine archetipica del ponte, che ha dato al sacerdote il suo nome arcaico e misterioso. Il mistico che attraversa il momento in cui non vi è nulla se non Dio contempla in qualche senso i principi senza principio in cui davvero non vi era nient’altro. Egli non solo apprezza ogni cosa ma il nulla di cui ogni cosa fu fatta. In un certo modo egli sostiene e risponde perfino all’ironia sismica del Libro di Giobbe; in un certo senso egli è presente quando vengono poste le fondamenta del mondo, con le stelle del mattino che cantano insieme e i figli di Dio che gridano di gioia. Questa non è che una lontana adombratura della ragione per cui il Francescano, cencioso, senza un soldo, senza casa e apparentemente senza speranza, uscì davvero cantando tali canti quali potrebbero venire dalle stelle del mattino; e gridando, figlio di Dio.
This sense of the great gratitude and the sublime dependence was not a phrase or even a sentiment; it is the whole point that this was the very rock of reality. It was not a fancy but a fact; rather it is true that beside it all facts are fancies. That we all depend in every detail, at every instant, as a Christian would say upon God, as even an agnostic would say upon existence and the nature of things, is not an illusion of imagination; on the contrary, it is the fundamental fact which we cover up, as with curtains, with the illusion of ordinary life. That ordinary life is an admirable thing in itself, just as imagination is an admirable thing in itself. But it is much more the ordinary life that is made of imagination than the contemplative life. He who has seen the whole world hanging on a hair of the mercy of God has seen the truth; we might almost say the cold truth. He who has seen the vision of his city upside-down has seen it the right way up.
Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank. The converse of this proposition is also true; and it is certain that this gratitude produced, in such men as we are here considering, the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man. The great painter boasted that he mixed all his colours with brains, and the great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts. In this sense it is certain that the mystical method establishes a very healthy external relation to everything else. But it must always be remembered that everything else has for ever fallen into a second place, in comparison with this simple fact of dependence on the divine reality. In so far as ordinary social relations have in them something that seems solid and self-supporting, some sense of being at once buttressed and cushioned; in so far as they establish sanity in the sense of security and security in the sense of self-sufficiency, the man who has seen the world hanging on a hair does have some difficulty in taking them so seriously as that. In so far as even the secular authorities and hierarchies, even the most natural superiorities and the most necessary subordinations, tend at once to put a man in his place, and to make him sure of his position, the man who has seen the human hierarchy upside down will always have something of a smile for its superiorities. In this sense the direct vision of divine reality does disturb solemnities that are sane enough in themselves. The mystic may have added a cubit to his stature; but he generally loses something of his status. He can no longer take himself for granted, merely because he can verify his own existence in a parish register or a family Bible. Such a man may have something of the appearance of the lunatic who has lost his name while preserving his nature; who straightway forgets what manner of man he was. “Hitherto I have called Pietro Bernardone father; but now I am the servant of God.”
All these profound matters must be suggested in short and imperfect phrases; and the shortest statement of one aspect of this illumination is to say that it is the discovery of an infinite debt. It may seem a paradox to say that a man may be transported with joy to discover that he is in debt. But this is only because in commercial cases the creditor does not generally share the transports of joy; especially when the debt is by hypothesis infinite and therefore unrecoverable. But here again the parallel of a natural love-story of the nobler sort disposes of the difficulty in a flash. There the infinite creditor does share the joy of the infinite debtor; for indeed they are both debtors and both creditors. In other words debt and dependence do become pleasures in the presence of unspoilt love; the word is used too loosely and luxuriously in popular simplifications like the present; but here the word is really the key. It is the key of all the problems of Franciscan morality which puzzle the merely modern mind; but above all it is the key of asceticism. It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be for ever paying it. He will be for ever giving back what he cannot give back, and cannot be expected to give back. He will be always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks. Men who think they are too modern to understand this are in fact too mean to understand it; we are most of us too mean to practise it. We are not generous enough to be ascetics; one might almost say not genial enough to be ascetics. A man must have magnanimity of surrender, of which he commonly only catches a glimpse in first love, like a glimpse of our lost Eden. But whether he sees it or not, the truth is in that riddle; that the whole world has, or is, only one good thing; and it is a bad debt.
If ever that rarer sort of romantic love, which was the truth that sustained the Troubadours, falls out of fashion and is treated as fiction, we may see some such misunderstanding as that of the modern world about asceticism. For it seems conceivable that some barbarians might try to destroy chivalry in love, as the barbarians ruling in Berlin destroyed chivalry in war. If that were ever so, we should have the same sort of unintelligent sneers and unimaginative questions. Men will ask what selfish sort of woman it must have been who ruthlessly exacted tribute in the form of flowers, or what an avaricious creature she can have been to demand solid gold in the form of a ring; just as they ask what cruel kind of God can have demanded sacrifice and self-denial. They will have lost the clue to all that lovers have meant by love; and will not understand that it was because the thing was not demanded that it was done. But whether or no any such lesser things will throw a light on the greater, it is utterly useless to study a great thing like the Franciscan movement while remaining in the modern mood that murmurs against gloomy asceticism. The whole point about St. Francis of Assisi is that he certainly was ascetical and he certainly was not gloomy. As soon as ever he had been unhorsed by the glorious humiliation of his vision of dependence on the divine love, he flung himself into fasting and vigil exactly as he had flung himself furiously into battle. He had wheeled his charger clean round, but there was no halt or check in the thundering impetuosity of his charge. There was nothing negative about it; it was not a regimen or a stoical simplicity of life. It was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure. He devoured fasting as a man devours food. He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold. And it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure. There undeniably is the historical fact; and there attached to it is another moral fact almost as undeniable. It is certain that he held on this heroic or unnatural course from the moment when he went forth in his hair-shirt into the winter woods to the moment when he desired even in his death agony to lie bare upon the bare ground, to prove that he had and that he was nothing. And we can say, with almost as deep a certainty, that the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once, in all their shining cycles round the world of labouring humanity, looked down upon a happy man.
Questo senso della grande gratitudine e della sublime dipendenza non era una frase e neppure un sentimento; il punto è tutto qui, che questa era la vera roccia della realtà. Non era una fantasia ma un fatto; anzi è vero che al suo confronto tutti i fatti sono fantasie. Che noi tutti dipendiamo in ogni particolare, in ogni istante, come direbbe un cristiano da Dio, come persino un agnostico direbbe dall’esistenza e dalla natura delle cose, non è un’illusione dell’immaginazione; al contrario, è il fatto fondamentale che noi ricopriamo, come con tende, con l’illusione della vita ordinaria. Quella vita ordinaria è in sé una cosa ammirevole, così come l’immaginazione è in sé una cosa ammirevole. Ma è molto più la vita ordinaria a essere fatta di immaginazione che non la vita contemplativa. Chi ha visto il mondo intero sospeso a un capello della misericordia di Dio ha visto la verità; potremmo quasi dire la fredda verità. Chi ha visto la visione della sua città capovolta l’ha vista nel verso giusto.
Rossetti osserva da qualche parte, con amarezza ma con grande verità, che il momento peggiore per l’ateo è quando è davvero riconoscente e non ha nessuno da ringraziare. L’inverso di questa proposizione è pure vero; ed è certo che questa gratitudine produsse, in uomini come quelli che qui consideriamo, i momenti più puramente gioiosi che siano mai stati noti all’uomo. Il grande pittore si vantava di mescolare tutti i suoi colori con l’ingegno, e del grande santo si può dire che mescoli tutti i suoi pensieri con il rendimento di grazie. Tutti i beni appaiono migliori quando appaiono come doni. In questo senso è certo che il metodo mistico stabilisce una relazione esterna molto sana con ogni altra cosa. Ma bisogna sempre ricordare che ogni altra cosa è per sempre caduta in secondo piano, a paragone di questo semplice fatto della dipendenza dalla realtà divina. Nella misura in cui le ordinarie relazioni sociali hanno in sé qualcosa che sembra solido e che si regge da sé, un certo senso di essere al tempo stesso puntellati e adagiati su cuscini; nella misura in cui esse stabiliscono la sanità di mente nel senso della sicurezza e la sicurezza nel senso dell’autosufficienza, l’uomo che ha visto il mondo sospeso a un capello ha qualche difficoltà a prenderle così sul serio. Nella misura in cui persino le autorità e le gerarchie secolari, persino le più naturali superiorità e le più necessarie subordinazioni, tendono al tempo stesso a mettere un uomo al suo posto e a renderlo sicuro della sua posizione, l’uomo che ha visto la gerarchia umana capovolta avrà sempre un che di sorriso per le sue superiorità. In questo senso la visione diretta della realtà divina turba davvero solennità che in sé sono abbastanza sensate. Il mistico può avere aggiunto un cubito alla sua statura; ma di solito perde qualcosa del suo stato. Non può più darsi per scontato, solo perché può verificare la propria esistenza in un registro parrocchiale o in una Bibbia di famiglia. Un tal uomo può avere qualcosa dell’aspetto del folle che ha perduto il proprio nome pur conservando la propria natura; che sul momento dimentica che sorta d’uomo fosse. «Finora ho chiamato padre Pietro Bernardone; ma ora sono il servo di Dio.»
Tutte queste materie profonde vanno suggerite in frasi brevi e imperfette; e l’enunciato più breve di un aspetto di questa illuminazione è dire che essa è la scoperta di un debito infinito. Può sembrare un paradosso dire che un uomo possa essere trasportato dalla gioia nello scoprire di essere in debito. Ma ciò accade solo perché nei casi commerciali il creditore non condivide generalmente i trasporti di gioia; specialmente quando il debito è per ipotesi infinito e perciò irrecuperabile. Ma anche qui il parallelo di una naturale storia d’amore della specie più nobile risolve la difficoltà in un lampo. Là il creditore infinito condivide davvero la gioia del debitore infinito; poiché in verità sono entrambi debitori ed entrambi creditori. In altre parole il debito e la dipendenza diventano davvero piaceri alla presenza dell’amore non guastato; la parola è usata troppo alla leggera e troppo lussuosamente in semplificazioni popolari come la presente; ma qui la parola è davvero la chiave. È la chiave di tutti i problemi della morale francescana che sconcertano la mente meramente moderna; ma soprattutto è la chiave dell’ascesi. È il più alto e il più santo dei paradossi che l’uomo il quale sa davvero di non poter pagare il proprio debito lo pagherà per sempre. Restituirà per sempre ciò che non può restituire, e che non ci si può aspettare che restituisca. Getterà sempre le cose in un pozzo senza fondo di insondabili ringraziamenti. Gli uomini che si credono troppo moderni per comprendere questo sono in realtà troppo gretti per comprenderlo; e i più fra noi sono troppo gretti per praticarlo. Non siamo abbastanza generosi per essere asceti; si potrebbe quasi dire non abbastanza gioviali per essere asceti. Un uomo deve avere la magnanimità della resa, di cui comunemente coglie solo un barlume nel primo amore, come un barlume del nostro Eden perduto. Ma che lo veda o no, la verità è in quell’enigma; che il mondo intero ha, o è, una sola cosa buona; ed è un debito inesigibile.
Se mai quella specie più rara d’amore romantico, che era la verità su cui si reggevano i Trovatori, dovesse passare di moda ed essere trattata come finzione, potremmo vedere qualche fraintendimento simile a quello del mondo moderno riguardo all’ascesi. Poiché è concepibile che certi barbari tentino di distruggere la cavalleria nell’amore, come i barbari che governano a Berlino distrussero la cavalleria in guerra. Se mai fosse così, avremmo la stessa sorta di sogghigni ottusi e di domande prive di immaginazione. Gli uomini domanderanno che sorta di donna egoista dovette essere colei che spietatamente esigeva tributo in forma di fiori, o che creatura avara dovette essere per pretendere oro massiccio in forma di anello; proprio come domandano che sorta di Dio crudele abbia potuto esigere sacrificio e rinuncia di sé. Avranno perduto la chiave di tutto ciò che gli amanti hanno inteso per amore; e non capiranno che fu proprio perché la cosa non era richiesta che essa fu fatta. Ma che simili cose minori gettino o no una luce sulle maggiori, è del tutto inutile studiare una grande cosa come il movimento francescano restando nell’umore moderno che mormora contro la cupa ascesi. Tutto il punto riguardo a san Francesco d’Assisi è che egli certamente era ascetico e certamente non era cupo. Non appena fu disarcionato dalla gloriosa umiliazione della sua visione di dipendenza dall’amore divino, si gettò nel digiuno e nella veglia esattamente come si era gettato furiosamente in battaglia. Aveva fatto voltare di netto il suo destriero, ma non vi fu sosta né freno nella tonante impetuosità della sua carica. Non vi era nulla di negativo in ciò; non era un regime né una stoica semplicità di vita. Non era rinuncia di sé meramente nel senso del controllo di sé. Era positiva come una passione; aveva tutta l’aria di essere positiva come un piacere. Divorava il digiuno come un uomo divora il cibo. Si tuffava dietro la povertà come gli uomini hanno scavato follemente in cerca d’oro. Ed è precisamente la qualità positiva e appassionata di questa parte della sua personalità che costituisce una sfida alla mente moderna in tutto il problema della ricerca del piacere. Là innegabilmente vi è il fatto storico; e a esso è connesso un altro fatto morale quasi altrettanto innegabile. È certo che egli tenne questa rotta eroica o innaturale dal momento in cui uscì nel suo cilicio tra i boschi d’inverno fino al momento in cui desiderò, persino nella sua agonia di morte, giacere nudo sulla nuda terra, per provare che nulla aveva e nulla era. E possiamo dire, con una certezza quasi altrettanto profonda, che le stelle che passarono sopra quel cadavere scarno e consunto, rigido sul pavimento roccioso, per una volta, in tutti i loro cicli splendenti attorno al mondo dell’umanità travagliata, abbassarono lo sguardo su un uomo felice.
CHAPTER VI
THE LITTLE POOR MAN
From that cavern, that was a furnace of glowing gratitude and humility, there came forth one of the strongest and strangest and most original personalities that human history has known. He was, among other things, emphatically what we call a character; almost as we speak of a character in a good novel or play. He was not only a humanist but a humourist; a humourist especially in the old English sense of a man always in his humour, going his own way and doing what nobody else would have done. The anecdotes about him have a certain biographical quality of which the most familiar example is Dr. Johnson; which belongs in another way to William Blake or to Charles Lamb. The atmosphere can only be defined by a sort of antithesis; the act is always unexpected and never inappropriate. Before the thing is said or done it cannot even be conjectured; but after it is said or done it is felt to be merely characteristic. It is surprisingly and yet inevitably individual. This quality of abrupt fitness and bewildering consistency belongs to St. Francis in a way that marks him out from most men of his time. Men are learning more and more of the solid social virtues of medieval civilisation; but those impressions are still social rather than individual. The medieval world was far ahead of the modern world in its sense of the things in which all men are at one: death and the daylight of reason and the common conscience that holds communities together. Its generalisations were saner and sounder than the mad materialistic theories of to-day; nobody would have tolerated a Schopenhauer scorning life or a Nietzsche living only for scorn. But the modern world is more subtle in its sense of the things in which men are not at one; in the temperamental varieties and differentiations that make up the personal problems of life. All men who can think themselves now realise that the great schoolmen had a type of thought that was wonderfully clear; but it was as it were deliberately colourless. All are now agreed that the greatest art of the age was the art of public buildings; the popular and communal art of architecture. But it was not an age for the art of portrait-painting. Yet the friends of St. Francis have really contrived to leave behind a portrait; something almost resembling a devout and affectionate caricature. There are lines and colours in it that are personal almost to the extent of being perverse, if one can use the word perversity of an inversion that was also a conversion. Even among the saints he has the air of a sort of eccentric, if one may use the word of one whose eccentricity consisted in always turning towards the centre.
Before resuming the narrative of his first adventures, and the building of the great brotherhood which was the beginning of so merciful a revolution, I think it well to complete this imperfect personal portrait here; and having attempted in the last chapter a tentative description of the process, to add in this chapter a few touches to describe the result. I mean by the result the real man as he was after his first formative experiences; the man whom men met walking about on the Italian roads in his brown tunic tied with a rope. For that man, saving the grace of God, is the explanation of all that followed; men acted quite differently according to whether they had met him or not. If we see afterwards a vast tumult, an appeal to the Pope, mobs of men in brown habits besieging the seats of authority, Papal pronouncements, heretical sessions, trial and triumphant survival, the world full of a new movement, the friar a household word in every corner of Europe, and if we ask why all this happened, we can only approximate to any answer to our own question if we can, in some faint and indirect imaginative fashion, hear one human voice or see one human face under a hood. There is no answer except that Francis Bernardone had happened; and we must try in some sense to see what we should have seen if he had happened to us. In other words, after some groping suggestions about his life from the inside, we must again consider it from the outside; as if he were a stranger coming up the road towards us, along the hills of Umbria, between the olives or the vines.
Francis of Assisi was slight in figure with that sort of slightness which, combined with so much vivacity, gives the impression of smallness. He was probably taller than he looked; middle-sized, his biographers say; he was certainly very active and, considering what he went through, must have been tolerably tough. He was of the brownish Southern colouring, with a dark beard thin and pointed such as appears in pictures under the hoods of elves. And his eyes glowed with the fire that fretted him night and day. There is something about the description of all he said and did which suggests that, even more than most Italians, he turned naturally to a passionate pantomime of gestures. If this was so it is equally certain that with him, even more than with most Italians, the gestures were all gestures of politeness or hospitality. And both these facts, the vivacity and the courtesy, are the outward signs of something that mark him out very distinctively from many who might appear to be more of his kind than they really are. It is truly said that Francis of Assisi was on of the founders of the medieval drama, and therefore of the modern drama. He was the very reverse of a theatrical person in the selfish sense; but for all that he was pre-eminently a dramatic person. This side of him can best be suggested by taking what is commonly regarded as a reposeful quality; what is commonly described as a love of nature. We are compelled to use the term; and it is entirely the wrong term.
St. Francis was not a lover of nature. Properly understood, a lover of nature was precisely what he was not. The phrase implies accepting the material universe as a vague environment, a sort of sentimental pantheism. In the romantic period of literature, in the age of Byron and Scott, it was easy enough to imagine that a hermit in the ruins of a chapel (preferably by moonlight) might find peace and a mild pleasure in the harmony of solemn forests and silent stars, while he pondered over some scroll or illuminated volume, about the liturgical nature of which the author was a little vague. In short, the hermit might love nature as a background. Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. We might say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that divine darkness out of which the divine love had called up every coloured creature one by one. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting, not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play. A bird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose, though it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death. A bush could stop him like a brigand; and indeed he was as ready to welcome the brigand as the bush.
CAPITOLO VI
IL PICCOLO POVERO
Da quella caverna, che era una fornace di ardente gratitudine e umiltà, venne fuori una delle personalità più forti, più strane e più originali che la storia umana abbia mai conosciuto. Egli era, fra le altre cose, enfaticamente ciò che noi chiamiamo un carattere; quasi come parliamo di un personaggio in un buon romanzo o in un dramma. Non era soltanto un umanista ma un umorista; un umorista specialmente nel vecchio senso inglese di un uomo sempre nel suo umore, che va per la sua strada e fa ciò che nessun altro avrebbe fatto. Gli aneddoti su di lui hanno una certa qualità biografica di cui l’esempio più familiare è il dottor Johnson; e che appartiene in altro modo a William Blake o a Charles Lamb. L’atmosfera può essere definita solo per una sorta di antitesi; l’atto è sempre inatteso e mai inappropriato. Prima che la cosa sia detta o fatta non può nemmeno essere congetturata; ma dopo che è detta o fatta la si sente semplicemente caratteristica. È sorprendentemente e tuttavia inevitabilmente individuale. Questa qualità di brusca appropriatezza e sconcertante coerenza appartiene a san Francesco in un modo che lo distingue dalla maggior parte degli uomini del suo tempo. Gli uomini vanno imparando sempre più delle solide virtù sociali della civiltà medievale; ma quelle impressioni sono ancora sociali piuttosto che individuali. Il mondo medievale era assai più avanti del mondo moderno nel suo senso delle cose in cui tutti gli uomini sono uniti: la morte e la luce del giorno della ragione e la comune coscienza che tiene insieme le comunità. Le sue generalizzazioni erano più sane e più solide delle folli teorie materialistiche di oggi; nessuno avrebbe tollerato uno Schopenhauer che disprezzava la vita o un Nietzsche che viveva solo per il disprezzo. Ma il mondo moderno è più sottile nel suo senso delle cose in cui gli uomini non sono uniti; nelle varietà temperamentali e nelle differenziazioni che compongono i problemi personali della vita. Tutti gli uomini che sanno pensare ormai comprendono che i grandi scolastici avevano un tipo di pensiero che era meravigliosamente chiaro; ma era, per così dire, deliberatamente incolore. Tutti ora convengono che la più grande arte dell’epoca fu l’arte degli edifici pubblici; l’arte popolare e comunitaria dell’architettura. Ma non fu un’epoca per l’arte del ritratto. Eppure gli amici di san Francesco sono davvero riusciti a lasciare dietro di sé un ritratto; qualcosa che quasi assomiglia a una devota e affettuosa caricatura. Vi sono in esso linee e colori che sono personali quasi al punto di essere perversi, se si può usare la parola perversità di un’inversione che era anche una conversione. Persino tra i santi egli ha l’aria di una sorta di eccentrico, se si può usare la parola di uno la cui eccentricità consisteva nel volgersi sempre verso il centro.
Prima di riprendere il racconto delle sue prime avventure, e della costruzione della grande fratellanza che fu l’inizio di una così misericordiosa rivoluzione, ritengo bene completare qui questo imperfetto ritratto personale; e avendo tentato nell’ultimo capitolo una descrizione provvisoria del processo, aggiungere in questo capitolo alcuni tocchi per descriverne il risultato. Intendo per risultato l’uomo reale quale era dopo le sue prime esperienze formative; l’uomo che gli uomini incontravano mentre camminava per le strade italiane nella sua tunica bruna legata con una corda. Poiché quell’uomo, salva la grazia di Dio, è la spiegazione di tutto ciò che seguì; gli uomini agirono in modo del tutto diverso a seconda che lo avessero incontrato o no. Se in seguito vediamo un vasto tumulto, un appello al Papa, folle di uomini in abiti bruni che assediano le sedi dell’autorità, pronunciamenti papali, sessioni eretiche, processo e trionfante sopravvivenza, il mondo pieno di un nuovo movimento, il frate una parola familiare in ogni angolo d’Europa, e se ci chiediamo perché tutto questo accadde, possiamo avvicinarci a una qualche risposta alla nostra stessa domanda solo se possiamo, in qualche debole e indiretta maniera immaginativa, udire una voce umana o vedere un volto umano sotto un cappuccio. Non c’è altra risposta se non che Francesco Bernardone era accaduto; e dobbiamo cercare in qualche senso di vedere ciò che avremmo visto se egli fosse accaduto a noi. In altre parole, dopo alcuni suggerimenti a tentoni sulla sua vita dall’interno, dobbiamo di nuovo considerarla dall’esterno; come se egli fosse uno straniero che ci viene incontro lungo la strada, lungo le colline dell’Umbria, tra gli ulivi o le vigne.
Francesco d’Assisi era esile di corporatura, di quella sorta di esilità che, unita a tanta vivacità, dà l’impressione della piccolezza. Era probabilmente più alto di quanto sembrasse; di statura media, dicono i suoi biografi; era certamente molto attivo e, considerando ciò che affrontò, dovette essere discretamente robusto. Aveva la carnagione brunastra del Sud, con una barba scura, sottile e appuntita come quella che appare nei dipinti sotto i cappucci degli elfi. E i suoi occhi ardevano del fuoco che lo tormentava notte e giorno. C’è qualcosa nella descrizione di tutto ciò che disse e fece che suggerisce come, ancor più della maggior parte degli italiani, egli si volgesse naturalmente a una appassionata pantomima di gesti. Se così era, è altrettanto certo che con lui, ancor più che con la maggior parte degli italiani, i gesti erano tutti gesti di cortesia o di ospitalità. Ed entrambi questi fatti, la vivacità e la cortesia, sono i segni esteriori di qualcosa che lo distingue assai nettamente da molti che potrebbero sembrare più affini a lui di quanto realmente siano. Si dice giustamente che Francesco d’Assisi fu uno dei fondatori del dramma medievale, e quindi del dramma moderno. Egli era esattamente l’opposto di una persona teatrale nel senso egoistico; ma nondimeno era eminentemente una persona drammatica. Questo lato di lui può essere meglio suggerito prendendo ciò che comunemente è considerato una qualità di riposo; ciò che comunemente è descritto come un amore per la natura. Siamo costretti a usare il termine; ed è del tutto il termine sbagliato.
San Francesco non era un amante della natura. A ben intendere, un amante della natura era precisamente ciò che egli non era. L’espressione implica l’accettare l’universo materiale come un vago ambiente, una sorta di sentimentale panteismo. Nel periodo romantico della letteratura, nell’età di Byron e di Scott, era abbastanza facile immaginare che un eremita fra le rovine di una cappella (preferibilmente al chiaro di luna) potesse trovare pace e un mite piacere nell’armonia di solenni foreste e silenziose stelle, mentre meditava su qualche rotolo o volume miniato, sulla cui natura liturgica l’autore era un poco vago. In breve, l’eremita poteva amare la natura come uno sfondo. Ora, per san Francesco nulla era mai sullo sfondo. Potremmo dire che la sua mente non aveva sfondo, tranne forse quella divina oscurità da cui il divino amore aveva chiamato alla vita ogni creatura colorata a una a una. Egli vedeva ogni cosa come drammatica, distinta dalla sua ambientazione, non tutta d’un pezzo come un quadro ma in azione come un dramma. Un uccello gli passava accanto come una freccia; qualcosa con una storia e uno scopo, benché fosse uno scopo di vita e non uno scopo di morte. Un cespuglio poteva fermarlo come un brigante; e in verità egli era pronto ad accogliere il brigante come il cespuglio.
In a word, we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees. St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man. But he did not want to stand against a piece of stage scenery used merely as a background, and inscribed in a general fashion: “Scene; a wood.” In this sense we might say that he was too dramatic for the drama. The scenery would have come to life in his comedies; the walls would really have spoken like Snout the Tinker and the trees would really have come walking to Dunsinane. Everything would have been in the foreground; and in that sense in the footlights. Everything would be in every sense a character. This is the quality in which, as a poet, he is the very opposite of a pantheist. He did not call nature his mother; he called a particular donkey his brother or a particular sparrow his sister. If he had called a pelican his aunt or an elephant his uncle as he might possibly have done, e would still have meant that they were particular creatures assigned by their Creator to particular places; not mere expressions of the evolutionary energy of things. That is where his mysticism is so close to the common sense of the child. A child has no difficulty about understanding that God made the dog and the cat; though he is well aware that the making of dogs and cats out of nothing is a mysterious process beyond his own imagination. But no child would understand what you meant if you mixed up the dog and the cat and everything else into one monster with myriad legs and called it nature. The child would resolutely refuse to make head or tail of any such animal. St. Francis was a mystic, but he believed in mysticism and not in mystification. As a mystic he was the mortal enemy of all those mystics who melt away the edges of things and dissolve an entity into its environment. He was a mystic of the daylight and the darkness; but not a mystic of the twilight. He was the very contrary of that sort of oriental visionary who is only a mystic because he is too much of a sceptic to be a materialist. St. Francis was emphatically a realist, using the word realist in its much more real medieval sense. In this matter he really was akin to the best spirit of his age, which had just won its victory over the nominalism of the twelfth century. In this indeed there was something symbolic in the contemporary art and decoration of his period; as in the art of heraldry. The Franciscan birds and beasts were really rather like heraldic birds and beasts; not in the sense of being fabulous animals but in the sense of being treated as if they were facts, clear and positive and unaffected by the illusions of atmosphere and perspective. In that sense he did see a bird sable on a field azure or a sheep argent on a field vert. But the heraldry of humility was richer than the heraldry of pride; for it saw all these things that God had given as something more precious and unique than the blazonry that princes and peers had only given to themselves. Indeed out of the depths of that surrender it rose higher than the highest titles of the feudal age; than the laurel of Ceasar or the Iron Crown of Lombardy. It is an example of extremes that meet, that the Little Poor Man, who had stripped himself of everything and named himself as nothing, took the same title that has been the wild vaunt of the vanity of the gorgeous Asiatic autocrat, and called himself the Brother of the Sun and Moon.
This quality, of something outstanding and even startling in things as St. Francis saw them, is here important as illustrating a character in his own life. As he saw all things dramatically, so he himself was always dramatic. We have to assume throughout, needless to say, that he was a poet and can only be understood as a poet. But he had one poetic privilege denied to most poets. In that respect indeed he might be called the one happy poet among all the unhappy poets of the world. He was a poet whose whole life was a poem. He was not so much a minstrel merely singing his own songs as a dramatist capable of acting the whole of his own play. The things he said were more imaginative than the things he wrote. The things he did were more imaginative than the things he said. His whole course through life was a series of scenes in which he had a sort of perpetual luck in bringing things to a beautiful crisis. To talk about the art of living has come to sound rather artificial than artistic. But St. Francis did in a definite sense make the very act of living an art, though it was an unpremeditated art. Many of his acts will seem grotesque and puzzling to a rationalistic taste. But they were always acts and not explanations; and they always meant what he meant them to mean. The amazing vividness with which he stamped himself on the memory and imagination of mankind is very largely due to the fact that he was seen again and again under such dramatic conditions. From the moment when he rent his robes and flung them at his father’s feet to the moment when he stretched himself in death on the bare earth in the pattern of the cross, his life was made up of these unconscious attitudes and unhesitating gestures. It would be easy to fill page after page with examples; but I will here pursue the method found convenient everywhere in this short sketch, and take one typical example, dwelling on it with a little more detail than would be possible in a catalogue, in the hope of making the meaning more clear. The example taken here occurred in the last days of his life, but it refers back in a rather curious fashion to the first; and rounds off the remarkable unity of that romance of religion.
In una parola, stiamo parlando di un uomo che non riesce a vedere il bosco a causa degli alberi. San Francesco era un uomo che non voleva vedere il bosco a causa degli alberi. Egli voleva vedere ogni albero come una cosa distinta e quasi sacra, essendo un figlio di Dio e perciò fratello o sorella dell’uomo. Ma non voleva trovarsi davanti a un pezzo di scenografia teatrale usato semplicemente come sfondo, e recante l’iscrizione generica: «Scena: un bosco». In questo senso potremmo dire che egli era troppo drammatico per il dramma. Nelle sue commedie lo scenario avrebbe preso vita; i muri avrebbero davvero parlato come Snout lo Stagnino e gli alberi sarebbero davvero venuti in marcia fino a Dunsinane. Ogni cosa sarebbe stata in primo piano; e in quel senso sotto le luci della ribalta. Ogni cosa sarebbe stata, in ogni senso, un personaggio. Questa è la qualità per la quale, come poeta, egli è l’esatto opposto di un panteista. Non chiamava la natura sua madre; chiamava un particolare asino suo fratello o un particolare passero sua sorella. Se avesse chiamato un pellicano sua zia o un elefante suo zio, come forse avrebbe potuto fare, avrebbe pur sempre voluto dire che essi erano creature particolari assegnate dal loro Creatore a luoghi particolari; non meri modi di esprimersi dell’energia evolutiva delle cose. È qui che il suo misticismo è tanto vicino al buon senso del bambino. Un bambino non ha alcuna difficoltà a comprendere che Dio ha fatto il cane e il gatto; benché sia ben consapevole che il fare cani e gatti dal nulla sia un processo misterioso al di là della sua stessa immaginazione. Ma nessun bambino capirebbe che cosa intendi se mescolassi insieme il cane e il gatto e ogni altra cosa in un unico mostro dalle miriadi di zampe e lo chiamassi natura. Il bambino si rifiuterebbe risolutamente di raccapezzarsi in una simile bestia. San Francesco era un mistico, ma credeva nel misticismo e non nella mistificazione. Come mistico era il nemico mortale di tutti quei mistici che sfumano i contorni delle cose e dissolvono un’entità nel suo ambiente. Era un mistico della luce del giorno e delle tenebre; ma non un mistico del crepuscolo. Era il perfetto contrario di quella sorta di visionario orientale che è mistico solo perché è troppo scettico per essere materialista. San Francesco era decisamente un realista, usando la parola realista nel suo senso medievale assai più reale. In questa faccenda egli era davvero affine al migliore spirito della sua epoca, che aveva appena riportato la sua vittoria sul nominalismo del dodicesimo secolo. In ciò vi era in effetti qualcosa di simbolico nell’arte e nella decorazione contemporanea del suo tempo; come nell’arte dell’araldica. Gli uccelli e le bestie francescane erano davvero piuttosto simili agli uccelli e alle bestie araldiche; non nel senso di essere animali favolosi, ma nel senso di essere trattati come se fossero fatti, chiari e positivi e non toccati dalle illusioni dell’atmosfera e della prospettiva. In quel senso egli vedeva davvero un uccello di nero in campo azzurro o una pecora d’argento in campo verde. Ma l’araldica dell’umiltà era più ricca dell’araldica dell’orgoglio; poiché essa vedeva tutte queste cose che Dio aveva donato come qualcosa di più prezioso e unico dei blasoni che i principi e i pari avevano donato soltanto a se stessi. Anzi, dalle profondità di quella rinuncia essa si levava più in alto dei più alti titoli dell’età feudale; più in alto dell’alloro di Cesare o della Corona Ferrea di Lombardia. È un esempio di estremi che si toccano il fatto che il Poverello, che si era spogliato di ogni cosa e si era nominato come un nulla, abbia preso lo stesso titolo che è stato il selvaggio vanto della vanità del sfarzoso autocrate asiatico, e si sia chiamato il Fratello del Sole e della Luna.
Questa qualità, di qualcosa di eminente e persino sorprendente nelle cose come San Francesco le vedeva, è qui importante perché illustra un tratto della sua stessa vita. Poiché egli vedeva tutte le cose drammaticamente, così egli stesso era sempre drammatico. Dobbiamo presupporre in tutto, inutile dirlo, che egli fosse un poeta e possa essere compreso solo come un poeta. Ma egli ebbe un privilegio poetico negato alla maggior parte dei poeti. Sotto quell’aspetto, in effetti, potrebbe essere chiamato l’unico poeta felice fra tutti gli infelici poeti del mondo. Era un poeta la cui vita intera fu un poema. Non era tanto un menestrello che si limita a cantare le proprie canzoni, quanto un drammaturgo capace di recitare per intero il proprio dramma. Le cose che disse furono più immaginose delle cose che scrisse. Le cose che fece furono più immaginose delle cose che disse. Il suo intero cammino attraverso la vita fu una serie di scene in cui ebbe una sorta di perpetua fortuna nel condurre le cose a una bella crisi. Parlare dell’arte del vivere è finito col suonare piuttosto artificioso che artistico. Ma San Francesco fece davvero, in senso preciso, dell’atto stesso del vivere un’arte, benché fosse un’arte non premeditata. Molti dei suoi atti sembreranno grotteschi e sconcertanti a un gusto razionalistico. Ma erano sempre atti e non spiegazioni; e significavano sempre ciò che egli voleva che significassero. La stupefacente vividezza con cui si impresse nella memoria e nell’immaginazione dell’umanità è dovuta in larga misura al fatto che egli fu visto più e più volte in condizioni tanto drammatiche. Dal momento in cui lacerò le sue vesti e le gettò ai piedi del padre al momento in cui si distese nella morte sulla nuda terra nella forma della croce, la sua vita fu fatta di questi atteggiamenti inconsci e di questi gesti senza esitazione. Sarebbe facile riempire pagina dopo pagina di esempi; ma qui seguirò il metodo che si è rivelato comodo dappertutto in questo breve profilo, e prenderò un esempio tipico, indugiandovi con un po’ più di dettaglio di quanto sarebbe possibile in un catalogo, nella speranza di rendere il senso più chiaro. L’esempio qui preso avvenne negli ultimi giorni della sua vita, ma rimanda in modo piuttosto curioso ai primi; e arrotonda la notevole unità di quel romanzo della religione.
The phrase about his brotherhood with the sun and moon, and with the water and the fire, occurs of course in his famous poem called the Canticle of the Creatures or the Canticle of the Sun. He sang it wandering in the meadows in the sunnier season of his own career, when he was pouring upwards into the sky all the passions of a poet. It is a supremely characteristic work, and much of St. Francis could be reconstructed from that work alone. Though in some ways the thing is as simple and straightforward as a ballad, there is a delicate instinct of differentiation in it. Notice, for instance, the sense of sex in inanimate things, which goes far beyond the arbitrary genders of a grammar. It was not for nothing that he called fire his brother, fierce and gay and strong, and water his sister, pure and clear and inviolate. Remember that St. Francis was neither encumbered nor assisted by all that Greek and Roman polytheism turned into allegory, which has been to European poetry often an inspiration, too often a convention. Whether he gained or lost by his contempt of learning, it never occurred to him to connect Neptune and the nymphs with the water or Vulcan and the Cyclops with the flame. This point exactly illustrates what has already been suggested; that, so far from being a revival of paganism, the Franciscan renascence was a sort of fresh start and first awakening after a forgetfulness of paganism. Certainly it is responsible for a certain freshness in the thing itself. Anyhow St. Francis was, as it were, the founder of a new folk-lore; but he could distinguish his mermaids from his mermen and his witches from his wizards. In short, he had to make his own mythology; but he knew at a glance the goddesses from the gods. This fanciful instinct for the sexes is not the only example of an imaginative instinct of the kind. There is just the same quaint felicity in the fact that he singles out the sun with a slightly more courtly title besides that of brother; a phrase that one king might use of another, corresponding to “Monsieur notre frere.” It is like a faint half ironic shadow of the shining primacy that it had held in the pagan heavens. A bishop is said to have complained of a Nonconformist saying Paul instead of Saint Paul; and to have added, “He might at least have called him Mr. Paul.” So St. Francis is free of all obligation to cry out in praise or terror on the Lord God Apollo, but in his new nursery heavens, he salutes him as Mr. Sun. Those are the things in which he has a sort of inspired infancy, only to be paralleled in nursery tales. Something of the same hazy but healthy awe makes the story of Br’er Fox and Br’er Rabbit refer respectfully to Mr. Man.
This poem, full of the mirth of youth and the memories of childhood, runs through his whole life like a refrain, and scraps of it turn up continually in the ordinary habit of his talk. Perhaps the last appearance of its special language was in an incident that has always seemed to me intensely impressive, and is at any rate very illustrative of the great manner and gesture of which I speak. Impressions of that kind are a matter of imagination and in that sense of taste. It is idle to argue about them; for it is the whole point of them that they have passed beyond words; and even when they use words, seem to be completed by some ritual movement like a blessing or a blow. So, in a supreme example, there is something far past all exposition, something like the sweeping movement and mighty shadow of a hand, darkening even the darkness of Gethsemane; “Sleep on now, and take your rest… ” Yet there are people who have started to paraphrase and expand the story of the Passion.
St. Francis was a dying man. We might say he was an old man, at the time this typical incident occurred; but in fact he was only prematurely old; for he was not fifty when he died, worn out with his fighting and fasting life. But when he came down from the awful asceticism and more awful revelation of Alverno, he was a broken man. As will be apparent when these events are touched on in their turn, it was not only sickness and bodily decay that may well have darkened his life; he had been recently disappointed in his main mission to end the Crusades by the conversion of Islam; he had been still more disappointed by the signs of compromise and a more political or practical spirit in his own order; he had spent his last energies in protest.
At this point he was told that he was going blind. If the faintest hint has been given here of what St. Francis felt about the glory and pageantry of earth and sky, about the heraldic shape and colour and symbolism of birds and beasts and flowers, some notion may be formed of what it meant to him to go blind. Yet the remedy might well have seemed worse than the disease. The remedy, admittedly an uncertain remedy, was to cauterise the eye, and that without any anaesthetic. In other words it was to burn his living eyeballs with a red-hot iron. Many of the tortures of martyrdom, which he envied in martyrology and sought vainly in Syria, can have been no worse. When they took the brand from the furnace, he rose as with an urbane gesture and spoke as to an invisible presence: “Brother Fire, God made you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous with me.”
If there be any such thing as the art of life, it seems to me that such a moment was one of its masterpieces. Not too many poets has it been given to remember their own poetry at such a moment, still less to live one of their own poems. Even William Blake would have been disconcerted if, while he was re-reading the noble lines, “Tiger, tiger, burning bright,” a large live Bengal tiger had put his head in at the window of the cottage in Felpham, evidently with every intention of biting his head off. He might have wavered before politely saluting it, above all by calmly completing the recitation of the poem to the quadruped to whom it was dedicated. Shelley, who wished to be a cloud or a leaf carried before the wind, have been mildly surprised to find himself turning slowly head over heels in mid-air a thousand feet above the sea. Even Keats, knowing that his hold on life was a frail one, might have been disturbed to discover that the true, the blushful Hippocrene of which he had just partaken freely had indeed contained a drug, which really ensured that he should cease upon the midnight with no pain. For Francis there was no drug; and for Francis there was plenty of pain. But his first thought was one of his first fancies from the songs of his youth. He remembered the time when a flame was a flower, only the most glorious and gaily coloured of the flowers in the garden of God; and when that shining thing returned to him in the shape of an instrument of torture, he hailed it from afar like an old friend, calling it by the nickname which might most truly be called its Christian name.
La frase sulla sua fratellanza con il sole e la luna, e con l’acqua e il fuoco, ricorre naturalmente nel suo celebre poema chiamato il Cantico delle Creature o Cantico del Sole. Lo cantava vagando per i prati nella stagione più assolata della propria vita, quando riversava verso il cielo tutte le passioni di un poeta. È un’opera sommamente caratteristica, e molto di San Francesco potrebbe essere ricostruito da quell’opera soltanto. Benché per certi versi la cosa sia semplice e diretta come una ballata, vi è in essa un delicato istinto di differenziazione. Si noti, per esempio, il senso del sesso nelle cose inanimate, che va ben oltre gli arbitrari generi di una grammatica. Non fu per nulla che egli chiamò il fuoco suo fratello, fiero e gaio e forte, e l’acqua sua sorella, pura e limpida e inviolata. Si ricordi che San Francesco non era né gravato né aiutato da tutto quel politeismo greco e romano tramutato in allegoria, che è stato per la poesia europea spesso un’ispirazione, troppo spesso una convenzione. Sia che guadagnasse o perdesse col suo disprezzo per il sapere, non gli venne mai in mente di collegare Nettuno e le ninfe all’acqua o Vulcano e i Ciclopi alla fiamma. Questo punto illustra esattamente ciò che è già stato suggerito; che, lungi dall’essere un revival del paganesimo, il rinascimento francescano fu una sorta di nuovo inizio e di primo risveglio dopo una dimenticanza del paganesimo. Certamente esso è responsabile di una certa freschezza nella cosa stessa. Comunque sia, San Francesco fu, per così dire, il fondatore di un nuovo folclore; ma sapeva distinguere le sue sirene dai suoi tritoni e le sue streghe dai suoi stregoni. In breve, dovette crearsi la propria mitologia; ma riconosceva a colpo d’occhio le dee dagli dèi. Questo fantasioso istinto per i sessi non è l’unico esempio di un istinto immaginoso di tal genere. Vi è proprio la stessa bizzarra felicità nel fatto che egli distingua il sole con un titolo lievemente più cortese oltre a quello di fratello; una frase che un re potrebbe usare verso un altro, corrispondente a «Monsieur notre frère». È come una pallida e semi-ironica ombra del primato splendente che esso aveva tenuto nei cieli pagani. Si dice che un vescovo si lamentasse di un non-conformista che diceva Paolo invece di San Paolo; e aggiungesse: «Avrebbe potuto almeno chiamarlo il signor Paolo». Così San Francesco è sciolto da ogni obbligo di gridare in lode o in terrore al Signore Iddio Apollo, ma nei suoi nuovi cieli da nursery lo saluta come il signor Sole. Queste sono le cose in cui egli possiede una sorta di ispirata infanzia, che trova riscontro soltanto nelle fiabe per bambini. Qualcosa dello stesso vago ma sano timore reverenziale fa sì che la storia di Fratel Volpe e Fratel Coniglio si riferisca rispettosamente al signor Uomo.
Questo poema, colmo dell’allegria della giovinezza e dei ricordi dell’infanzia, attraversa tutta la sua vita come un ritornello, e frammenti di esso spuntano di continuo nella consueta abitudine del suo parlare. Forse l’ultima apparizione del suo linguaggio particolare fu in un episodio che mi è sempre sembrato intensamente suggestivo, e che è comunque assai illustrativo di quel grande modo e gesto di cui parlo. Impressioni di tal genere sono cosa di immaginazione e in quel senso di gusto. È vano discuterne; poiché tutto il loro senso è che esse sono trascese le parole; e anche quando usano le parole, sembrano essere completate da qualche movimento rituale come una benedizione o un colpo. Così, in un esempio supremo, vi è qualcosa di ben oltre ogni esposizione, qualcosa come il movimento ampio e la possente ombra di una mano, che oscura persino le tenebre del Getsemani: «Dormite pure ormai, e riposatevi…». Eppure vi sono persone che si sono messe a parafrasare e a dilatare la storia della Passione.
San Francesco era un uomo morente. Potremmo dire che era un vecchio, al tempo in cui avvenne questo episodio tipico; ma in realtà era soltanto precocemente vecchio; poiché non aveva cinquant’anni quando morì, sfinito dalla sua vita di lotta e di digiuno. Ma quando scese dalla terribile ascesi e dalla ancor più terribile rivelazione dell’Alvernia, era un uomo distrutto. Come apparirà quando questi eventi verranno toccati a loro volta, non fu soltanto la malattia e il deperimento del corpo a poter ben aver rabbuiato la sua vita; egli era stato di recente deluso nella sua principale missione di porre fine alle Crociate mediante la conversione dell’Islam; era stato ancor più deluso dai segni di compromesso e di uno spirito più politico o pratico nel suo stesso ordine; aveva speso le sue ultime energie in una protesta.
A questo punto gli fu detto che stava per diventare cieco. Se qui è stato dato il più tenue accenno di ciò che San Francesco provava riguardo alla gloria e al fasto della terra e del cielo, riguardo alla forma e al colore e al simbolismo araldico degli uccelli e delle bestie e dei fiori, ci si potrà fare qualche idea di ciò che significava per lui diventare cieco. Eppure il rimedio poteva ben sembrare peggiore del male. Il rimedio, per ammissione un rimedio incerto, consisteva nel cauterizzare l’occhio, e ciò senza alcun anestetico. In altre parole consisteva nel bruciargli i bulbi oculari vivi con un ferro rovente. Molte delle torture del martirio, che egli invidiava nei martirologi e cercava invano in Siria, non possono essere state peggiori. Quando tolsero il ferro dalla fornace, egli si levò come con un gesto cortese e parlò come a una presenza invisibile: «Fratello Fuoco, Dio ti ha fatto bello e forte e utile; ti prego, sii cortese con me».
Se esiste una qualche cosa come l’arte del vivere, mi sembra che un simile momento sia stato uno dei suoi capolavori. Non a molti poeti è stato dato di ricordare la propria poesia in un tale momento, e ancor meno di vivere uno dei propri poemi. Persino William Blake sarebbe rimasto sconcertato se, mentre rileggeva i nobili versi «Tigre, tigre, che ardi splendente», una grande tigre del Bengala viva avesse messo la testa dentro la finestra del cottage a Felpham, evidentemente con ogni intenzione di staccargli la testa a morsi. Egli avrebbe forse esitato prima di salutarla cortesemente, e soprattutto prima di completare con calma la recitazione del poema al quadrupede a cui era dedicato. Shelley, che desiderava essere una nuvola o una foglia portata dinanzi al vento, sarebbe rimasto lievemente sorpreso di trovarsi a rotolare lentamente a capofitto a mezz’aria, mille piedi sopra il mare. Persino Keats, sapendo che la sua presa sulla vita era fragile, avrebbe potuto turbarsi nello scoprire che la vera, la vermiglia Ippocrene di cui aveva appena liberamente bevuto conteneva in effetti una droga, tale da assicurargli davvero di spegnersi a mezzanotte senza dolore. Per Francesco non vi fu alcuna droga; e per Francesco vi fu dolore in abbondanza. Ma il suo primo pensiero fu una delle sue prime fantasie dalle canzoni della sua giovinezza. Ricordò il tempo in cui una fiamma era un fiore, soltanto il più glorioso e vivacemente colorato dei fiori nel giardino di Dio; e quando quella cosa splendente ritornò a lui nella forma di uno strumento di tortura, egli la salutò da lontano come un vecchio amico, chiamandola col soprannome che più veracemente potrebbe dirsi il suo nome di battesimo.
That is only one incident out of a life of such incidents; and I have selected it partly because it shows what is meant here by that shadow of gesture there is in all his words, the dramatic gesture of the south; and partly because its special reference to courtesy covers the next fact to be noted. The popular instinct of St. Francis, and his perpetual preoccupation with the idea of brotherhood, will be entirely misunderstood if it is understood in the sense of what is often called camaraderie; the backslapping sort of brotherhood. Frequently from the enemies and too frequently from the friends of the democratic ideal, there has come a notion that this note is necessary to that ideal. It is assumed that equality means all men being equally uncivil, whereas it obviously ought to mean all men being equally civil. Such people have forgotten the very meaning and derivation of the word civility, if they do not see that to be uncivil is to be uncivic. But anyhow that was not the equality which Francis of Assisi encouraged; but an equality of the opposite kind; it was a camaraderie actually founded on courtesy.
Even in that fairy borderland of his mere fancies about flowers and animals and even inanimate things, he retained this permanent posture of a sort of deference. A friend of mine said that somebody was the sort of man who apologises to the cat. St. Francis really would have apologised to the cat. When he was about to preach in a wood full of the chatter of birds, he said, with a gentle gesture, “Little sisters, if you have now had your say, it is time that I also should be heard.” And all the birds were silent; as I for one can very easily believe. In deference to my special design of making matters intelligible to average modernity, I have treated separately the subject of the miraculous powers that St. Francis most certainly possessed.
But even apart from any miraculous powers, men of that magnetic sort, with that intense interest in animals, often have an extraordinary power over them. St. Francis’s power was always exercised with this elaborate politeness. Much of it was doubtless a sort of symbolic joke, a pious pantomime intended to convey the vital distinction in his divine mission, that he not only loved but reverenced God in all his creatures. In this sense he had the air not only of apologising to the cat or to the birds, but of apologising to a chair for sitting on it or to a table for sitting down at it. Any one who had followed him through life merely to laugh at him, as a sort of lovable lunatic, might easily have had an impression as of a lunatic who bowed to every post or took off his hat to every tree. This was all a part of his instinct for imaginative gesture. He taught the world a large part of its lesson by a sort of divine dumb alphabet. But if there was this ceremonial element even in lighter or lesser matters, its significance became far more serious in the serious work of his life, which was an appeal to humanity, or rather to human beings.
I have said that St. Francis deliberately did not see the wood for the trees. It is even more true that he deliberately did not see the mob for the men. What distinguishes this very genuine democrat from any mere demagogue is that he never either deceived or was deceived by the illusion of mass-suggestion. Whatever his taste in monsters, he never saw before him a many-headed beast. He only saw the image of God multiplied but never monotonous. To him a man was always a man and did not disappear in a dense crowd any more than in a desert. He honoured all men; that is, he not only loved but respected them all. What gave him his extraordinary personal power was this; that from the Pope to the beggar, from the sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those brown burning eyes without being certain that Francis Bernardone was really interested in him; in his own inner individual life from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was being valued and taken seriously, and not merely added to the spoils of some social policy or the names in some clerical document. Now for this particular moral and religious idea there is no external expression except courtesy. Exhortation does not express it, for it is not mere abstract enthusiasm; beneficence does not express it, for it is not mere pity. It can only be conveyed by a certain grand manner which may be called good manners. We may say if we like that St. Francis, in the bare and barren simplicity of his life, had clung to one rag of luxury; the manners of a court.
But whereas in a court there is one king and a hundred courtiers, in this story there was one courtier, moving among a hundred kings. For he treated the whole mob of men as a mob of kings. And this was really and truly the only attitude that will appeal to that part of man to which he wished to appeal. It cannot be done by giving gold or even bread; for it is a proverb that any reveller may fling largesse in mere scorn. It cannot even be done by giving time and attention; for any number of philanthropists and benevolent bureaucrats do such work with a scorn far more cold and horrible in their hearts. No plans or proposals or efficient rearrangements will give back to a broken man his self-respect and sense of speaking with an equal. One gesture will do it.
With that gesture Francis of Assisi moved among men; and it was soon found to have something in it of magic and to act, in a double sense, like a charm. But it must always be conceived as a completely natural gesture; for indeed it was almost a gesture of apology. He must be imagined as moving thus swiftly through the world with a sort of impetuous politeness; almost like the movement of a man who stumbles on one knee half in haste and half in obeisance. The eager face under the brown hood was that of a man always going somewhere, as if he followed as well as watched the flight of the birds. And this sense of motion is indeed the meaning of the whole revolution that he made; for the work that has now to be described was of the nature of an earthquake or a volcano, an explosion that drove outwards with dynamic energy the forces stored up by ten centuries in the monastic fortress or arsenal and scattered all its riches recklessly to the ends of the earth. In a better sense than the antithesis commonly conveys, it is true to say that what St. Benedict had stored St. Francis scattered; but in the world of spiritual things what had been stored into the barns like grain was scattered over the world as seed. The servants of God who had been a besieged garrison became a marching army; the ways of the world were filled as with thunder with the trampling of their feet and far ahead of that ever swelling host went a man singing; as simply he had sung that morning in the winter woods, where he walked alone.
Questo è solo un episodio tratto da una vita fatta di tali episodi; e l’ho scelto in parte perché mostra ciò che qui si intende con quell’ombra di gesto che vi è in tutte le sue parole, il gesto drammatico del sud; e in parte perché il suo particolare riferimento alla cortesia copre il fatto successivo che va notato. L’istinto popolare di San Francesco, e la sua perpetua preoccupazione con l’idea della fratellanza, verranno interamente fraintesi se li si intende nel senso di ciò che spesso si chiama cameratismo; quel genere di fratellanza a pacche sulle spalle. Spesso dai nemici e troppo spesso dagli amici dell’ideale democratico è venuta l’idea che questa nota sia necessaria a quell’ideale. Si presume che uguaglianza significhi che tutti gli uomini siano ugualmente scortesi, mentre ovviamente dovrebbe significare che tutti gli uomini siano ugualmente cortesi. Simili persone hanno dimenticato il significato stesso e la derivazione della parola civiltà, se non vedono che essere incivili è essere anti-civici. Ma comunque non era quella l’uguaglianza che Francesco d’Assisi incoraggiava; bensì un’uguaglianza del genere opposto; era un cameratismo fondato di fatto sulla cortesia.
Persino in quella fatata terra di confine delle sue mere fantasie sui fiori e sugli animali e persino sulle cose inanimate, egli conservava questo atteggiamento permanente di una sorta di deferenza. Un mio amico disse che un tale era il genere d’uomo che si scusa con il gatto. San Francesco si sarebbe davvero scusato con il gatto. Quando stava per predicare in un bosco pieno del cinguettio degli uccelli, disse, con un gesto gentile: «Sorelline, se ora avete detto la vostra, è tempo che anch’io sia ascoltato». E tutti gli uccelli tacquero; come, per parte mia, posso ben facilmente credere. In deferenza al mio speciale intento di rendere le cose intelligibili alla modernità media, ho trattato separatamente l’argomento dei poteri miracolosi che San Francesco certissimamente possedeva.
Ma anche a prescindere da qualsiasi potere miracoloso, gli uomini di quella tempra magnetica, con quell’intenso interesse per gli animali, hanno spesso uno straordinario potere su di essi. Il potere di San Francesco era sempre esercitato con questa elaborata cortesia. Molto di esso era senza dubbio una sorta di scherzo simbolico, una pia pantomima intesa a trasmettere la distinzione vitale della sua missione divina, e cioè che egli non solo amava ma riveriva Dio in tutte le sue creature. In questo senso egli aveva l’aria non solo di scusarsi con il gatto o con gli uccelli, ma di scusarsi con una sedia per sedervisi sopra o con una tavola per sedersi a essa. Chiunque lo avesse seguito attraverso la vita solo per ridere di lui, come di una sorta di adorabile pazzo, avrebbe facilmente potuto ricavarne l’impressione di un pazzo che si inchinava a ogni palo o si toglieva il cappello davanti a ogni albero. Tutto ciò era parte del suo istinto per il gesto immaginoso. Egli insegnò al mondo gran parte della sua lezione mediante una sorta di divino alfabeto muto. Ma se vi era questo elemento cerimoniale persino nelle faccende più lievi o minori, il suo significato diveniva assai più serio nell’opera seria della sua vita, che era un appello all’umanità, o piuttosto agli esseri umani.
Ho detto che San Francesco deliberatamente non vedeva il bosco a causa degli alberi. È ancor più vero che egli deliberatamente non vedeva la folla a causa degli uomini. Ciò che distingue questo genuinissimo democratico da un semplice demagogo è che egli non ingannò né fu mai ingannato dall’illusione della suggestione di massa. Qualunque fosse il suo gusto in fatto di mostri, non vide mai davanti a sé una bestia dalle molte teste. Vedeva soltanto l’immagine di Dio moltiplicata ma mai monotona. Per lui un uomo era sempre un uomo e non spariva in una folla densa più di quanto sparisse in un deserto. Egli onorava tutti gli uomini; vale a dire, non solo li amava ma li rispettava tutti. Ciò che gli dava il suo straordinario potere personale era questo; che dal Papa al mendicante, dal sultano di Siria nel suo padiglione ai cenciosi briganti che strisciavano fuori dal bosco, non vi fu mai un uomo che guardasse dentro quegli occhi bruni e ardenti senza avere la certezza che Francesco Bernardone fosse davvero interessato a lui; alla sua stessa vita interiore e individuale dalla culla alla tomba; che egli stesso fosse valorizzato e preso sul serio, e non semplicemente aggiunto al bottino di qualche politica sociale o ai nomi di qualche documento clericale. Ora, per questa particolare idea morale e religiosa non vi è espressione esterna se non la cortesia. L’esortazione non la esprime, poiché non è mero entusiasmo astratto; la beneficenza non la esprime, poiché non è mera pietà. Essa può essere trasmessa soltanto da un certo grande modo che si potrebbe chiamare buone maniere. Possiamo dire, se ci piace, che San Francesco, nella nuda e spoglia semplicità della sua vita, si era aggrappato a un unico brandello di lusso; le maniere di una corte.
Ma mentre in una corte c’è un re e cento cortigiani, in questa storia c’era un cortigiano che si muoveva fra cento re. Poiché egli trattava l’intera folla degli uomini come una folla di re. E questo era davvero e veramente l’unico atteggiamento capace di fare presa su quella parte dell’uomo alla quale egli intendeva fare appello. Non lo si può fare dando oro o persino pane; poiché è proverbiale che qualsiasi festaiolo può gettare elargizioni per puro disprezzo. Non lo si può fare nemmeno dando tempo e attenzione; poiché un numero qualsiasi di filantropi e di benevoli burocrati compie tale opera con un disprezzo assai più freddo e orribile nei loro cuori. Nessun piano o proposta o efficiente riordino restituirà a un uomo distrutto il suo rispetto di sé e il senso di parlare con un pari. Un solo gesto lo farà.
Con quel gesto Francesco d’Assisi si muoveva fra gli uomini; e ben presto ci si accorse che vi era in esso qualcosa di magico e che agiva, in un duplice senso, come un incantesimo. Ma lo si deve sempre concepire come un gesto del tutto naturale; poiché in effetti era quasi un gesto di scusa. Lo si deve immaginare mentre si muove così rapidamente attraverso il mondo con una sorta di impetuosa cortesia; quasi come il movimento di un uomo che inciampa su un ginocchio, metà per fretta e metà in atto di ossequio. Il volto ardente sotto il cappuccio bruno era quello di un uomo che va sempre da qualche parte, come se seguisse tanto quanto osservasse il volo degli uccelli. E questo senso di movimento è in effetti il significato dell’intera rivoluzione che egli operò; poiché l’opera che ora deve essere descritta ebbe la natura di un terremoto o di un vulcano, un’esplosione che spinse verso l’esterno con energia dinamica le forze accumulate in dieci secoli nella fortezza o arsenale monastico e disperse tutte le sue ricchezze temerariamente fino ai confini della terra. In un senso migliore di quello che l’antitesi comunemente veicola, è vero dire che ciò che San Benedetto aveva accumulato San Francesco lo disperse; ma nel mondo delle cose spirituali ciò che era stato accumulato nei granai come grano fu disperso per il mondo come seme. I servi di Dio che erano stati una guarnigione assediata divennero un esercito in marcia; le vie del mondo si riempirono come di tuono col calpestio dei loro piedi e assai davanti a quella schiera sempre crescente andava un uomo cantando; con la stessa semplicità con cui aveva cantato quel mattino nei boschi d’inverno, dove camminava solo.
Chapter VII
THE THREE ORDERS
There is undoubtedly a sense in which two is company and three is none; there is also another sense in which three is company and four is none as is proved by the procession of historic and fictitious figures moving three deep the famous trios like the Three Musketeers or the Three Soldiers of Kipling. But there is yet another and a different sense in which four is company and three is none; if we use the word company in the vaguer sense of a crowd or a mass. With the fourth man enters the shadow of a mob; the group is no longer one of three individuals only conceived individually. That shadow of the fourth man fell across the little hermitage of the Portiuncula when a man named Egidio apparently a poor workman was invited by St. Francis to enter. He mingled without difficulty with the merchant and the canon who had already become the companions of Francis; but with his coming an invisible line was crossed; for it must have been felt by this time that the growth of that small group had become potentially infinite, or at least that its outline had become permanently indefinite. It may have been in the time of that transition that Francis had another of his dreams full of voices; but now the voices were a clamour of the tongues of all nations, Frenchmen and Italians and English and Spanish and Germans, telling of the glory of God each in his own tongue; a new Pentecost and a happier Babel.
Before describing the first steps he took to regularise the growing group, it is well to have a rough grasp of what he conceived that group to be. He did not call his followers monks; and it is not clear, at this time at least, that he even thought of them as monks. He called them by a name which is generally rendered in English as the Friars Minor; but we shall be much closer to the atmosphere of his own mind if we render it almost literally as The Little Brothers. Presumably he was already resolved, indeed, that they should take the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience which had always been the mark of a monk. But it would seem that he was not so much afraid of the idea of a monk as of the idea of an abbot. He was afraid that the great spiritual magistracies which had given even to their holiest possessors at least a sort of impersonal and corporate pride, would import an element of pomposity that would spoil his extremely and almost extravagantly simple version of the life of humility. But the supreme difference between his discipline and the discipline of the old monastic system was concerned, of course, with the idea that the monks were to become migratory and almost nomadic instead of stationary. They were to mingle with the world; and to this the more old-fashioned monk would naturally reply by asking how they were to mingle with the world without becoming entangled with the world. It was a much more real question than a loose religiosity is likely to realise; but St. Francis had his answer to it, of his own individual sort; and the interest of the problem is in that highly individual answer.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, “if we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.” That sentence is the clue to the whole policy that he pursued. It rested upon a real piece of logic; and about that he was never anything but logical. He was ready to own himself wrong about anything else; but he was quite certain he was right about this particular rule. He was only once seen angry; and that was when there was talk of an exception to the rule.
His argument was this: that the dedicated man might go anywhere among any kind of men, even the worst kind of men, so long as there was nothing by which they could hold him. If he had any ties or needs like ordinary men, he would become like ordinary men. St. Francis was the last man in the world to think any the worse of ordinary men for being ordinary. They had more affection and admiration from him than they are ever likely to have again. But for his own particular purpose of stirring up the world to a new spiritual enthusiasm, he saw with a logical clarity that was quite reverse of fanatical or sentimental, that friars must not become like ordinary men; that the salt must not lose its savour even to turn into human nature’s daily food. And the difference between a friar and an ordinary man was really that a friar was freer than an ordinary man. It was necessary that he should be free from the cloister; but it was even more important that he should be free from the world. It is perfectly sound common sense to say that there is a sense in which the ordinary man cannot be free from the world; or rather ought not to be free from the world. The feudal world in particular was one labyrinthine system of dependence; but it was not only the feudal world that went to make up the mediaeval world nor the mediaeval world that went to make up the whole world; and the whole world is full of this fact. Family life as much as feudal life is in its nature a system of dependence. Modern trade unions as much as mediaeval guilds are interdependent among themselves even in order to be independent of others. In mediaeval as in modern life, even where these limitations do exist for the sake of liberty, they have in them a considerable element of luck. They are partly the result of circumstances; sometimes the almost unavoidable result of circumstances. So the twelfth century had been the age of vows; and there was something of relative freedom in that feudal gesture of the vow; for no man asks vows from slaves any more than from spades. Still, in practice, a man rode to war in support of the ancient house of the Column or behind the Great Dog of the Stairway largely because had been born in a certain city or countryside. But no man need obey little Francis in the old brown coat unless he chose. Even in his relations with his chosen leader he was in one sense relatively free, compared with the world around him. He was obedient but not dependent. And he was as free as the wind, he was almost wildly free, in his relation to that world around him. The world around him was, as has been noted, a network of feudal and family and other forms of dependence. The whole idea of St. Francis was that the Little Brothers should be like little fishes who could go freely in and out of that net. They could do so precisely because they were small fishes and in that sense even slippery fishes. There was nothing that the world could hold them by; for the world catches us mostly by the fringes of our garments, the futile externals of our lives. One of the Franciscans says later, “A monk should own nothing but his harp”; meaning, I suppose, that he should value nothing but his song, the song with which it was his business as a minstrel to serenade every castle and cottage, the song of the joy of the Creator in his creation and the beauty of the brotherhood of men. In imagining the life of this sort of visionary vagabond, we May already get a glimpse also of the practical side of that asceticism which puzzles those who think themselves practical. A man had to be thin to pass always through the bars and out of the cage; he had to travel light in order to ride so fast and so far. It was the whole calculation, so to speak, of that innocent cunning, that the world was to be outflanked and outwitted by him, and be embarrassed about what to do with him. You could not threaten to starve a man who was ever striving to fast. You could not ruin him and reduce him to beggary, for he was already a beggar. There was a very lukewarm satisfaction even in beating him with a stick, when he only indulged in little leaps and cries of joy because indignity was his only dignity. You could not put his head in a halter without the risk of putting it in a halo.
Capitolo VII
I TRE ORDINI
Vi è indubbiamente un senso in cui due fanno compagnia e tre no; vi è anche un altro senso in cui tre fanno compagnia e quattro no, come è provato dalla processione di figure storiche e immaginarie che si muovono in file di tre, i famosi terzetti come i Tre Moschettieri o i Tre Soldati di Kipling. Ma vi è ancora un altro e diverso senso in cui quattro fanno compagnia e tre no; se usiamo la parola compagnia nel senso più vago di una calca o di una massa. Con il quarto uomo entra l’ombra di una folla; il gruppo non è più composto di tre soli individui concepiti individualmente. Quell’ombra del quarto uomo cadde attraverso il piccolo eremo della Porziuncola quando un uomo di nome Egidio, apparentemente un povero operaio, fu invitato da San Francesco a entrare. Egli si mescolò senza difficoltà con il mercante e il canonico che erano già divenuti i compagni di Francesco; ma con la sua venuta fu varcata una linea invisibile; poiché a questo tempo doveva essersi avvertito che la crescita di quel piccolo gruppo era divenuta potenzialmente infinita, o almeno che il suo contorno era divenuto permanentemente indefinito. Può essere stato nel tempo di quella transizione che Francesco ebbe un altro dei suoi sogni pieni di voci; ma ora le voci erano un clamore delle lingue di tutte le nazioni, francesi e italiani e inglesi e spagnoli e tedeschi, che narravano la gloria di Dio ciascuno nella propria lingua; una nuova Pentecoste e una più felice Babele.
Prima di descrivere i primi passi che egli compì per regolarizzare il gruppo crescente, è bene avere una nozione approssimativa di ciò che egli concepiva che quel gruppo fosse. Non chiamava i suoi seguaci monaci; e non è chiaro, almeno in questo tempo, che egli li pensasse nemmeno come monaci. Li chiamava con un nome che generalmente si rende in inglese come Frati Minori; ma saremo assai più vicini all’atmosfera della sua mente se lo rendiamo quasi alla lettera come i Fratini. Presumibilmente era già risoluto, in effetti, che essi prendessero i tre voti di povertà, castità e obbedienza che erano sempre stati il segno del monaco. Ma parrebbe che egli non temesse tanto l’idea di un monaco quanto l’idea di un abate. Temeva che le grandi magistrature spirituali, le quali avevano dato persino ai loro più santi detentori almeno una sorta di orgoglio impersonale e corporativo, importassero un elemento di pomposità che avrebbe rovinato la sua versione estremamente e quasi stravagantemente semplice della vita di umiltà. Ma la differenza suprema tra la sua disciplina e la disciplina dell’antico sistema monastico riguardava, naturalmente, l’idea che i monaci dovessero diventare migratori e quasi nomadi anziché stanziali. Dovevano mescolarsi al mondo; e a questo il monaco più all’antica avrebbe naturalmente replicato chiedendo come potessero mescolarsi al mondo senza restare invischiati nel mondo. Era una questione assai più reale di quanto una religiosità superficiale sia propensa a riconoscere; ma San Francesco aveva la sua risposta, del suo particolare tipo individuale; e l’interesse del problema sta in quella risposta altamente individuale.
Il buon vescovo di Assisi espresse una sorta di orrore per la dura vita che i Fratini conducevano alla Porziuncola, senza comodità, senza possedimenti, mangiando qualunque cosa riuscissero a procurarsi e dormendo alla meglio per terra. San Francesco gli rispose con quella curiosa e quasi sconvolgente acutezza che gli spiriti alieni dal mondo sanno talvolta brandire come una clava di pietra. Disse: «Se avessimo dei possedimenti, avremmo bisogno di armi e di leggi per difenderli». Quella frase è la chiave di tutta la politica che egli perseguì. Essa poggiava su un vero pezzo di logica; e a questo riguardo egli non fu mai altro che logico. Era pronto a riconoscersi in errore su qualunque altra cosa; ma era del tutto certo di aver ragione su questa particolare regola. Fu visto adirato una sola volta; e ciò fu quando si parlò di un’eccezione alla regola.
Il suo ragionamento era questo: che l’uomo consacrato potesse andare ovunque, tra qualsiasi genere di uomini, persino il genere peggiore di uomini, purché non vi fosse nulla per cui essi potessero trattenerlo. Se avesse avuto legami o bisogni come gli uomini comuni, sarebbe divenuto come gli uomini comuni. San Francesco era l’ultimo uomo al mondo a pensare peggio degli uomini comuni per il fatto di essere comuni. Essi ricevettero da lui più affetto e ammirazione di quanto probabilmente ne riceveranno mai più. Ma per il suo particolare scopo di suscitare nel mondo un nuovo entusiasmo spirituale, egli vedeva con una chiarezza logica del tutto contraria al fanatismo o al sentimentalismo, che i frati non dovevano diventare come gli uomini comuni; che il sale non doveva perdere il suo sapore fino a mutarsi nel cibo quotidiano della natura umana. E la differenza tra un frate e un uomo comune era davvero che un frate era più libero di un uomo comune. Era necessario che egli fosse libero dal chiostro; ma era ancor più importante che egli fosse libero dal mondo. È perfetto buon senso dire che vi è un senso in cui l’uomo comune non può essere libero dal mondo; o meglio non deve essere libero dal mondo. Il mondo feudale in particolare era un unico labirintico sistema di dipendenza; ma non era soltanto il mondo feudale a comporre il mondo medievale né il mondo medievale a comporre il mondo intero; e il mondo intero è pieno di questo fatto. La vita familiare tanto quanto la vita feudale è nella sua natura un sistema di dipendenza. I moderni sindacati tanto quanto le corporazioni medievali sono interdipendenti tra loro persino al fine di essere indipendenti dagli altri. Nella vita medievale come in quella moderna, anche là dove queste limitazioni esistono in nome della libertà, esse hanno in sé un considerevole elemento di fortuna. Sono in parte il risultato delle circostanze; talvolta il risultato quasi inevitabile delle circostanze. Così il dodicesimo secolo era stato l’età dei voti; e vi era qualcosa di relativa libertà in quel gesto feudale del voto; poiché nessuno chiede voti agli schiavi più di quanto ne chieda alle vanghe. Eppure, in pratica, un uomo cavalcava alla guerra a sostegno dell’antica casata della Colonna o al seguito del Gran Cane della Scala in gran parte perché era nato in una certa città o campagna. Ma nessuno era tenuto a obbedire al piccolo Francesco nella vecchia tonaca bruna se non lo sceglieva. Persino nei suoi rapporti con il capo che si era scelto egli era in un senso relativamente libero, rispetto al mondo che lo circondava. Era obbediente ma non dipendente. Ed era libero come il vento, era quasi selvaggiamente libero, nella sua relazione con quel mondo che lo circondava. Il mondo che lo circondava era, come si è notato, una rete di forme feudali e familiari e d’altro genere di dipendenza. Tutta l’idea di San Francesco era che i Fratini fossero come piccoli pesci capaci di entrare e uscire liberamente da quella rete. Potevano farlo proprio perché erano piccoli pesci e in quel senso persino pesci sfuggenti. Non c’era nulla per cui il mondo potesse trattenerli; poiché il mondo ci cattura per lo più per le frange delle nostre vesti, i futili elementi esteriori delle nostre vite. Uno dei francescani dice più tardi: «Un monaco non dovrebbe possedere nulla se non la sua arpa»; intendendo, suppongo, che egli non dovrebbe apprezzare nulla se non il suo canto, il canto con cui era suo compito, come menestrello, fare la serenata a ogni castello e a ogni casa, il canto della gioia del Creatore nella sua creazione e della bellezza della fratellanza degli uomini. Immaginando la vita di questo genere di visionario vagabondo, possiamo già cogliere anche uno sprazzo del lato pratico di quell’ascesi che sconcerta coloro che si credono pratici. Un uomo doveva essere magro per passare sempre tra le sbarre e uscire dalla gabbia; doveva viaggiare leggero per poter cavalcare così veloce e così lontano. Era tutto il calcolo, per così dire, di quell’innocente astuzia, che il mondo dovesse essere aggirato e giocato da lui, e restare imbarazzato su cosa farne. Non si poteva minacciare di far morire di fame un uomo che si sforzava sempre di digiunare. Non lo si poteva rovinare e ridurre all’accattonaggio, poiché era già un mendicante. Vi era una soddisfazione ben tiepida persino nel bastonarlo, quando egli si abbandonava solo a piccoli salti e grida di gioia perché l’indegnità era la sua unica dignità. Non gli si poteva mettere la testa in un cappio senza il rischio di mettergliela in un’aureola.
But one distinction between the old Monks and the new friars counted especially in the matter of practicality and especially of promptitude. The old fraternities with their fixed habitations and enclosed existence had the limitations of ordinary householders. However simply they lived there must be a certain number of cells or a certain number of beds or at least a certain cubic space for a certain number of brothers; their numbers therefore depended on their land and building material. But since a man could become a Franciscan by merely promising to take his chance of eating berries in a lane or begging a crust from a kitchen, of sleeping under a hedge or sitting patiently on a doorstep, there was no economic reason why there should not be any number of such eccentric enthusiasts within any short period of time. It must also be remembered that the whole of this rapid development was full of a certain kind of democratic optimism that really was part of the personal character of St. Francis. His very asceticism was in one sense the height of optimism. He demanded a great deal of human nature not because he despised it but rather because he trusted it. He was expecting a very great deal from the extraordinary men who followed him; but he was also expecting a good deal from the ordinary men to whom he sent them. He asked the laity for food as confidently as he asked the fraternity for fasting. But he counted on the hospitality of humanity because he really did regard every house as the house of a friend. He really did love and honour ordinary men and ordinary things; indeed we may say that he only sent out the extraordinary men to encourage men to be ordinary.
This paradox may be more exactly stated or explained when we come to deal with the very interesting matter of the Third Order, which was designed to assist ordinary men to be ordinary with an extraordinary exultation. The point at issue at present is the audacity and simplicity of the Franciscan plan for quartering its spiritual soldiery upon the population; not by force but by persuasion, and even by the persuasion of impotence. It was an act of confidence and therefore a compliment. It was completely successful. It was an example of something that clung about St. Francis always; a kind of tact that looked like luck because it was as simple and direct as a thunderbolt. There are many examples in his private relations of this sort of tactless tact; this surprise effected by striking at the heart of the matter. It is said that a young friar was suffering from a sort of sulks between morbidity and humility, common enough in youth and hero-worship, in which he had got it into his head that his hero hated or despised him. We can imagine how tactfully social diplomatists would steer clear of scenes and excitements, how cautiously psychologists would watch and handle such delicate cases. Francis suddenly walked up to the young man, who was of course secretive and silent as the grave, and said, “Be not troubled in your thoughts for you are dear to me, and even among the number of those who are most dear. You know that you are worthy of my friendship and society; therefore come to me, in confidence, whensoever you will, and from friendship learn faith.” Exactly as he spoke to that morbid boy he spoke to all mankind. He always went to the point; he always seemed at once more right and more simple than the person he was speaking to. He seemed at once to be laying open his guard and yet lunging at the heart. Something in this attitude disarmed the world as it has never been disarmed again. He was better than other men; he was a benefactor of other men; and yet he was not hated. The world came into church by a newer and nearer door; and by friendship it learnt faith.
It was while the little knot of people at the Portiuncula was still small enough to gather in a small room that St. Francis resolved on his first important and even sensational stroke. It is said that there were only twelve Franciscans in the whole world when he decided to march, as it were, on Rome and found a Franciscan order. It would seem that this appeal to remote headquarters was not generally regarded as necessary; possibly something could have been done in a secondary way under the Bishop of Assisi and the local clergy. It would seem even more probable that people thought it somewhat unnecessary to trouble the supreme tribunal of Christendom about what a dozen chance men chose to call themselves. But Francis was obstinate and as it were blind on this point; and his brilliant blindness is exceedingly characteristic of him. A man satisfied with small things, or even in love with small things, he yet never felt quite as we do about the disproportion between small things and large. He never saw things to scale in our sense, but with a dizzy disproportion which makes the mind reel. Sometimes it seems merely out of drawing like a gaily coloured medieval map; and then again it seems to have escaped from everything like a short cut in the fourth dimension. He is said to have made a journey to interview the Emperor, throned among his armies under the eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, to intercede for the lives of certain little birds. He was quite capable of facing fifty emperors to intercede for one bird. He started out with two companions to convert the Mahometan world. He started out with eleven companions to ask the Pope to make a new monastic world.
Innocent III, the great Pope, according to Bonaventura, was walking on the terrace of St. John Lateran, doubtless revolving the great political questions which troubled his reign, when there appeared abruptly before him a person in peasant costume whom he took to be some sort of shepherd. He appears to have got rid of the shepherd with all convenient speed; possibly he formed the opinion that the shepherd was mad. Anyhow he thought no more about it until, says the great Franciscan biographer, he dreamed that night a strange dream. He fancied that he saw the whole huge ancient temple of St. John Lateran, on whose high terraces he had walked so securely, leaning horribly and crooked against the sky as if all its domes and turrets were stooping before an earthquake Then he looked again and saw that a human figure was holding it up like a living caryatid; and the figure was that of the ragged shepherd or peasant from whom he had turned away on the terrace. Whether this be a fact or a figure it is a very true figure of the abrupt simplicity with which Francis won the attention and the favour of Rome. His first friend seems to have been the Cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo who pleaded for the Franciscan idea before a conclave of Cardinals summoned for the purpose. It is interesting to note that the doubts thrown upon it seem to have been chiefly doubts about whether the rule was not too hard for humanity, for the Catholic Church is always on the watch against excessive asceticism and its evils. Probably they meant, especially when they said it was unduly hard, that it was unduly dangerous. For a certain element that can only be called danger is what marks the innovation as compared with older institutions of the kind. In one sense indeed the friar was almost the opposite of the monk. The value of the old monasticism had been that there was not only an ethical but an economic repose. Out of that repose had come the works for which the world will never be sufficiently grateful, the preservation of the classics, the beginning of the Gothic, the schemes of science and philosophies, the illuminated manuscripts and the coloured glass. The whole point of a monk was that his economic affairs were settled for good; he knew where he would get his supper, though it was a very plain supper. But the whole point of a friar was that he did not know where he would get his supper. There was always a possibility that he might get no supper. There was an element of what would be called romance, as of the gipsy or adventurer. But there was also an element of potential tragedy, as of the tramp or the casual labourer. So the Cardinals of the thirteenth century were filled with compassion, seeing a few men entering of their own free will that estate to which the poor of the twentieth century are daily driven by cold coercion and moved on by the police.
Ma una distinzione tra gli antichi monaci e i nuovi frati contava in modo speciale in fatto di praticità e specialmente di prontezza. Le antiche fraternità, con le loro dimore fisse e la loro esistenza reclusa, avevano le limitazioni dei comuni capifamiglia. Per quanto semplicemente vivessero, doveva esservi un certo numero di celle o un certo numero di letti o almeno un certo spazio cubico per un certo numero di fratelli; il loro numero dipendeva perciò dalla loro terra e dal loro materiale da costruzione. Ma poiché un uomo poteva diventare francescano semplicemente promettendo di correre il rischio di mangiare bacche in un viottolo o di mendicare una crosta di pane da una cucina, di dormire sotto una siepe o di sedere pazientemente su una soglia, non vi era alcuna ragione economica per cui non dovesse esservi un numero qualsiasi di simili eccentrici entusiasti entro un qualsiasi breve periodo di tempo. Si deve anche ricordare che l’intero di questo rapido sviluppo era pieno di un certo tipo di ottimismo democratico che era davvero parte del carattere personale di San Francesco. La sua stessa ascesi era in un senso il culmine dell’ottimismo. Egli esigeva moltissimo dalla natura umana non perché la disprezzasse ma piuttosto perché aveva fiducia in essa. Si aspettava moltissimo dagli uomini straordinari che lo seguivano; ma si aspettava anche molto dagli uomini comuni ai quali li inviava. Chiedeva ai laici il cibo con la stessa fiducia con cui chiedeva alla fraternità il digiuno. Ma faceva affidamento sull’ospitalità dell’umanità perché considerava davvero ogni casa come la casa di un amico. Egli davvero amava e onorava gli uomini comuni e le cose comuni; anzi possiamo dire che egli inviava gli uomini straordinari solo per incoraggiare gli uomini a essere comuni.
Questo paradosso potrà essere enunciato o spiegato più esattamente quando verremo a trattare l’assai interessante questione del Terz’Ordine, che era concepito per aiutare gli uomini comuni a essere comuni con una straordinaria esultanza. Il punto in discussione al momento è l’audacia e la semplicità del piano francescano di acquartierare la sua milizia spirituale in mezzo alla popolazione; non con la forza ma con la persuasione, e persino con la persuasione dell’impotenza. Era un atto di fiducia e perciò un complimento. Ebbe pieno successo. Fu un esempio di qualcosa che sempre si accompagnò a San Francesco; una sorta di tatto che sembrava fortuna perché era tanto semplice e diretto quanto un fulmine. Vi sono molti esempi, nei suoi rapporti privati, di questo genere di tatto senza tatto; questa sorpresa ottenuta colpendo al cuore della faccenda. Si dice che un giovane frate soffrisse di una sorta di malinconia a metà tra la morbosità e l’umiltà, abbastanza comune nella giovinezza e nel culto dell’eroe, nella quale si era messo in testa che il suo eroe lo odiasse o lo disprezzasse. Possiamo immaginare con quanto tatto i diplomatici mondani eviterebbero scene ed eccitazioni, con quanta cautela gli psicologi osserverebbero e maneggerebbero simili casi delicati. Francesco si avvicinò all’improvviso al giovane, che era naturalmente riservato e silenzioso come la tomba, e disse: «Non turbarti nei tuoi pensieri, poiché tu mi sei caro, e persino tra il numero di quelli che mi sono più cari. Tu sai di essere degno della mia amicizia e compagnia; perciò vieni a me, in confidenza, ogni volta che vorrai, e dall’amicizia impara la fede». Esattamente come parlò a quel ragazzo morboso, egli parlò a tutta l’umanità. Andava sempre al punto; sembrava sempre a un tempo più giusto e più semplice della persona a cui parlava. Sembrava a un tempo scoprire la propria guardia e tuttavia affondare il colpo al cuore. Qualcosa in questo atteggiamento disarmava il mondo come esso non è mai stato disarmato di nuovo. Egli era migliore degli altri uomini; era un benefattore degli altri uomini; e tuttavia non era odiato. Il mondo entrava in chiesa da una porta più nuova e più vicina; e per mezzo dell’amicizia apprendeva la fede.
Fu mentre il piccolo capannello di persone alla Porziuncola era ancora abbastanza piccolo da radunarsi in una piccola stanza che San Francesco si risolse al suo primo colpo importante e persino sensazionale. Si dice che vi fossero soltanto dodici francescani nel mondo intero quando egli decise di marciare, per così dire, su Roma e di fondare un ordine francescano. Parrebbe che questo appello al lontano quartier generale non fosse generalmente considerato necessario; forse qualcosa si sarebbe potuto fare in via secondaria sotto il vescovo di Assisi e il clero locale. Parrebbe ancor più probabile che si pensasse alquanto superfluo disturbare il supremo tribunale della cristianità per il modo in cui una dozzina di uomini presi a caso sceglievano di chiamarsi. Ma Francesco era ostinato e per così dire cieco su questo punto; e la sua brillante cecità è estremamente caratteristica di lui. Uomo soddisfatto delle piccole cose, o persino innamorato delle piccole cose, egli tuttavia non provava mai del tutto ciò che proviamo noi riguardo alla sproporzione tra le piccole cose e le grandi. Non vedeva mai le cose in scala nel nostro senso, ma con una vertiginosa sproporzione che fa girare la mente. Talvolta essa sembra semplicemente fuori disegno come una mappa medievale vivacemente colorata; e poi di nuovo sembra essersi sottratta a ogni cosa come una scorciatoia nella quarta dimensione. Si dice che egli abbia compiuto un viaggio per andare a colloquio con l’imperatore, assiso in trono tra i suoi eserciti sotto l’aquila del Sacro Romano Impero, per intercedere in favore della vita di certi piccoli uccelli. Era del tutto capace di affrontare cinquanta imperatori per intercedere in favore di un solo uccello. Partì con due compagni per convertire il mondo maomettano. Partì con undici compagni per chiedere al Papa di fare un nuovo mondo monastico.
Innocenzo III, il grande Papa, secondo Bonaventura, stava passeggiando sulla terrazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, rimuginando senza dubbio le grandi questioni politiche che travagliavano il suo pontificato, quando apparve bruscamente davanti a lui una persona in costume da contadino che egli prese per una sorta di pastore. Sembra che si sia sbarazzato del pastore con tutta la sollecitudine possibile; forse si formò l’opinione che il pastore fosse pazzo. Comunque non ci pensò più finché, dice il grande biografo francescano, quella notte sognò uno strano sogno. Gli parve di vedere l’intero enorme antico tempio di San Giovanni in Laterano, sulle cui alte terrazze aveva camminato tanto sicuro, inclinarsi orribilmente e storto contro il cielo, come se tutte le sue cupole e torrette si stessero curvando davanti a un terremoto. Poi guardò di nuovo e vide che una figura umana lo sorreggeva come una vivente cariatide; e la figura era quella del cencioso pastore o contadino da cui si era allontanato sulla terrazza. Che questo sia un fatto o una figura, è una figura assai veritiera della brusca semplicità con cui Francesco conquistò l’attenzione e il favore di Roma. Il suo primo amico sembra essere stato il cardinale Giovanni di San Paolo, che perorò l’idea francescana davanti a un conclave di cardinali convocato allo scopo. È interessante notare che i dubbi sollevati su di essa sembrano essere stati principalmente dubbi sul fatto che la regola non fosse troppo dura per l’umanità, poiché la Chiesa Cattolica è sempre in guardia contro l’ascesi eccessiva e i suoi mali. Probabilmente essi intendevano, specialmente quando dicevano che era eccessivamente dura, che era eccessivamente pericolosa. Poiché un certo elemento che può essere chiamato soltanto pericolo è ciò che segna questa innovazione rispetto alle più antiche istituzioni del genere. In un senso, in effetti, il frate era quasi l’opposto del monaco. Il valore dell’antico monachesimo era stato che vi era non solo una quiete etica ma una quiete economica. Da quella quiete erano venute le opere per le quali il mondo non sarà mai sufficientemente grato: la conservazione dei classici, l’inizio del gotico, i disegni della scienza e delle filosofie, i manoscritti miniati e i vetri colorati. Tutto il senso di un monaco era che i suoi affari economici erano sistemati per sempre; egli sapeva dove avrebbe trovato la sua cena, benché fosse una cena assai frugale. Ma tutto il senso di un frate era che egli non sapeva dove avrebbe trovato la sua cena. Vi era sempre la possibilità che non trovasse alcuna cena. Vi era un elemento di ciò che si chiamerebbe avventura, come del gitano o dell’avventuriero. Ma vi era anche un elemento di potenziale tragedia, come del vagabondo o del bracciante occasionale. Così i cardinali del tredicesimo secolo furono colmi di compassione, vedendo pochi uomini entrare di propria libera volontà in quella condizione alla quale i poveri del ventesimo secolo sono ogni giorno spinti dalla fredda coercizione e fatti circolare dalla polizia.
Cardinal San Paolo seems to have argued more or less in this manner: it may be a hard life, but after all it is the life apparently described as ideal in the Gospel; make what compromises you think wise or humane about that ideal; but do not commit yourselves to saying that men shall not fulfil that ideal if they can. We shall see the importance of this argument when we come to the whole of that higher aspect of the life of St. Francis which may be called the imitation of Christ. The upshot of the discussion was that the Pope gave his verbal approval to the project and promised a more definite endorsement, if the movement should grow to more considerable proportions. It is probable that Innocent, who was himself a man of no ordinary mentality, had very little doubt that it would do so; anyhow he was not left long in doubt before it did do so. The next passage in the history of the order is simply the story of more and more people flocking to its standard; and as has already been remarked, once it had begun to grow, it could in its nature grow much more quickly than any ordinary society requiring ordinary funds and public buildings. Even the return of the twelve pioneers from their papal audience seems to have been a sort of triumphal procession. In one place in particular, it is said, the whole population of a town, men, women and children, turned out, leaving their work and wealth and homes exactly as they stood and begging to be taken into the army of God on the spot. According to the story, it was on this occasion that St. Francis first foreshadowed his idea of the Third Order which enabled men to share in the movement without leaving the homes and habits of normal humanity. For the moment it is most important to regard this story as one example of the riot of conversion with which he was already filling all the roads of Italy. It was a world of wandering; friars perpetually coming and going in all the highways and byways, seeking to ensure that any man who met one of them by chance should have a spiritual adventure. The first Order of St. Francis had entered history.
This rough outline can only be rounded off here with some description of the Second and Third Orders, though they were founded later and at separate times. The former was an order for women and owed its existence, of course, to the beautiful friendship of St. Francis and St. Clare. There is no story about which even the most sympathetic critics of another creed have been more bewildered and misleading. For there is no story that more clearly turns on that simple test which I have taken as crucial throughout this criticism. I mean that what is the matter with these critics is that they will not believe that a heavenly love can be as real as an earthly love. The moment it is treated as real, like an earthly love, their whole riddle is easily resolved. A girl of seventeen, named Clare and belonging to one of the noble families of Assisi, was filled with an enthusiasm for the conventual life; and Francis helped her to escape from her home and to take up the conventual life. If we like to put it so, he helped her to elope into the cloister, defying her parents as he had defied his father. Indeed the scene had many of the elements of a regular romantic elopement; for she escaped through a hole in the wall, fled through a wood and was received at midnight by the light of torches. Even Mrs. Oliphant, in her fine and delicate study of St. Francis, calls it “an incident which we can hardly record with satisfaction.”
Now about that incident I will here only say this. If it had really been a romantic elopement and the girl had become a bride instead of a nun, practically the whole modern world would have made her a heroine. If the action of the Friar towards Clare had been the action of the Friar towards Juliet, everybody would be sympathising with her exactly as they sympathise with Juliet. It is not conclusive to say that Clare was only seventeen. Juliet was only fourteen. Girls married and boys fought in battles at such early ages in mediaeval times; and a girl of seventeen in the thirteenth century was certainly old enough to know her own mind. There cannot be the shadow of a doubt, for any sane person considering subsequent events, that St. Clare did know her own mind. But the point for the moment is that modern romanticism entirely encourages such defiance of parents when it is done in the name of romantic love. For it knows that romantic love is a reality, but it does not know that divine love is a reality. There may have been something to be said for the parents of Clare; there may have been something to be said for Peter Bernardone. So there may have been a great deal to be said for the Montagues or the Capulets; but the modern world does not want it said; and does not say it. The fact is that as soon as we assume for a moment as a hypothesis, what St. Francis and St. Clare assumed all the time as an absolute, that there is a direct divine relation more glorious than any romance, the story of St. Clare’s elopement is simply a romance with a happy ending; and St. Francis is the St. George or knight-errant who gave it a happy ending. And seeing that some millions of men and women have lived and died treating this relation as a reality, a man is not much of a philosopher if he cannot even treat it as a hypothesis.
For the rest, we may at least assume that no friend of what is called the emancipation of women will regret the revolt of St. Clare. She did most truly, in the modern jargon, live her own life, the life that she herself wanted to lead, as distinct from the life into which parental commands and conventional arrangements would have forced her. She became the foundress of a great feminine movement which still profoundly affects the world; and her place is with the powerful women of history. It is not clear that she would have been so great or so useful if she had made a runaway match, or even stopped at home and made a mariage de convenance. So much any sensible man may well say considering the matter merely from the outside; and I have no intention of attempting to consider it from the inside. If a man may well doubt whether he is worthy to write a word about St. Francis, he will certainly want words better than his own to speak of the friendship of St. Francis and St. Clare. I have often remarked that the mysteries of this story are best expressed symbolically in certain silent attitudes and actions. And I know no better symbol than that found by the felicity of popular legend, which says that one night the people of Assisi thought the trees and the holy house were on fire, and rushed up to extinguish the conflagration. But they found all quiet within, where St. Francis broke bread with St. Clare at one of their rare meetings, and talked of the love of God. It would be hard to find a more imaginative image, for some sort of utterly pure and disembodied passion, than that red halo round the unconscious figures on the hill; a flame feeding on nothing and setting the very air on fire.
Il cardinale San Paolo sembra aver ragionato più o meno in questo modo: può essere una vita dura, ma dopo tutto è la vita apparentemente descritta come ideale nel Vangelo; fate pure quei compromessi che ritenete saggi o umani riguardo a quell’ideale; ma non impegnatevi a dire che gli uomini non debbano compiere quell’ideale se ne sono capaci. Vedremo l’importanza di questo argomento quando verremo a quell’intero aspetto più elevato della vita di San Francesco che può essere chiamato l’imitazione di Cristo. L’esito della discussione fu che il Papa diede la sua approvazione verbale al progetto e promise un avallo più definito, qualora il movimento fosse cresciuto a proporzioni più considerevoli. È probabile che Innocenzo, che era egli stesso un uomo di non comune ingegno, avesse ben pochi dubbi che ciò sarebbe avvenuto; comunque non fu lasciato a lungo nel dubbio prima che avvenisse. Il passaggio successivo nella storia dell’ordine è semplicemente il racconto di sempre più gente che accorreva sotto il suo vessillo; e come si è già osservato, una volta che ebbe cominciato a crescere, esso poteva, per sua natura, crescere assai più rapidamente di qualsiasi società ordinaria che richieda fondi ordinari ed edifici pubblici. Persino il ritorno dei dodici pionieri dalla loro udienza papale sembra essere stato una sorta di processione trionfale. In un luogo in particolare, si dice, l’intera popolazione di una città, uomini, donne e bambini, uscì fuori, lasciando il proprio lavoro e le proprie ricchezze e le proprie case esattamente com’erano e supplicando di essere accolta seduta stante nell’esercito di Dio. Secondo il racconto, fu in questa occasione che San Francesco adombrò per la prima volta la sua idea del Terz’Ordine, che permetteva agli uomini di partecipare al movimento senza abbandonare le case e le abitudini della normale umanità. Per il momento è importantissimo considerare questo racconto come un esempio del tumulto di conversioni con cui egli stava già riempiendo tutte le strade d’Italia. Era un mondo di peregrinazione; frati che andavano e venivano perpetuamente per tutte le vie maestre e i sentieri, cercando di assicurarsi che chiunque si imbattesse per caso in uno di loro avesse un’avventura spirituale. Il primo Ordine di San Francesco era entrato nella storia.
Questo rozzo abbozzo può essere qui arrotondato soltanto con qualche descrizione del Secondo e del Terz’Ordine, benché fossero fondati più tardi e in momenti separati. Il primo era un ordine per donne e doveva la propria esistenza, naturalmente, alla bella amicizia di San Francesco e Santa Chiara. Non vi è storia su cui persino i critici più simpatetici di un’altra fede siano stati più sconcertati e fuorvianti. Poiché non vi è storia che più chiaramente si giochi su quel semplice criterio che ho assunto come cruciale in tutta questa disamina. Intendo che ciò che non va in questi critici è che essi non vogliono credere che un amore celeste possa essere reale quanto un amore terreno. Nel momento in cui lo si tratta come reale, al pari di un amore terreno, tutto il loro enigma si scioglie facilmente. Una fanciulla di diciassette anni, di nome Chiara e appartenente a una delle nobili famiglie di Assisi, fu colmata di un entusiasmo per la vita conventuale; e Francesco l’aiutò a fuggire dalla sua casa e ad abbracciare la vita conventuale. Se ci piace metterla così, egli l’aiutò a fuggire in un chiostro, sfidando i genitori come aveva sfidato suo padre. In effetti la scena aveva molti degli elementi di una regolare fuga romantica; poiché ella scappò attraverso un buco nel muro, fuggì per un bosco e fu accolta a mezzanotte alla luce delle torce. Persino la signora Oliphant, nel suo fine e delicato studio su San Francesco, la chiama «un episodio che difficilmente possiamo registrare con soddisfazione».
Ora, riguardo a quell’episodio dirò qui soltanto questo. Se fosse stata davvero una fuga romantica e la fanciulla fosse divenuta una sposa invece di una monaca, praticamente l’intero mondo moderno ne avrebbe fatto un’eroina. Se l’azione del Frate verso Chiara fosse stata l’azione del Frate verso Giulietta, tutti simpatizzerebbero con lei esattamente come simpatizzano con Giulietta. Non è conclusivo dire che Chiara aveva solo diciassette anni. Giulietta ne aveva solo quattordici. Le fanciulle si sposavano e i ragazzi combattevano in battaglia in età così precoce nei tempi medievali; e una fanciulla di diciassette anni nel tredicesimo secolo era certamente abbastanza grande da conoscere la propria mente. Non può esservi l’ombra di un dubbio, per qualsiasi persona sana di mente che consideri gli eventi successivi, che Santa Chiara conoscesse davvero la propria mente. Ma il punto per il momento è che il romanticismo moderno incoraggia interamente una simile sfida ai genitori quando è compiuta nel nome dell’amore romantico. Poiché esso sa che l’amore romantico è una realtà, ma non sa che l’amore divino è una realtà. Vi può essere stato qualcosa da dire in favore dei genitori di Chiara; vi può essere stato qualcosa da dire in favore di Pietro Bernardone. Così vi può essere stato molto da dire in favore dei Montecchi o dei Capuleti; ma il mondo moderno non vuole che lo si dica; e non lo dice. Il fatto è che non appena assumiamo per un momento come ipotesi ciò che San Francesco e Santa Chiara assumevano per tutto il tempo come un assoluto, e cioè che esista una relazione divina diretta più gloriosa di qualsiasi romanzo, la storia della fuga di Santa Chiara è semplicemente un romanzo con un lieto fine; e San Francesco è il San Giorgio o il cavaliere errante che le diede un lieto fine. E considerando che alcuni milioni di uomini e donne sono vissuti e morti trattando questa relazione come una realtà, un uomo non è un gran filosofo se non riesce nemmeno a trattarla come un’ipotesi.
Per il resto, possiamo almeno presumere che nessun amico di ciò che si chiama emancipazione della donna rimpiangerà la rivolta di Santa Chiara. Ella davvero, nel gergo moderno, visse la propria vita, la vita che ella stessa voleva condurre, distinta dalla vita nella quale i comandi paterni e le convenzionali sistemazioni l’avrebbero costretta. Divenne la fondatrice di un grande movimento femminile che tuttora influenza profondamente il mondo; e il suo posto è tra le donne potenti della storia. Non è chiaro che ella sarebbe stata così grande o così utile se avesse fatto un matrimonio d’amore in fuga, o persino se fosse rimasta a casa e avesse fatto un mariage de convenance. Tanto qualsiasi uomo assennato può ben dire considerando la faccenda dal solo esterno; e non ho alcuna intenzione di tentare di considerarla dall’interno. Se un uomo può ben dubitare di essere degno di scrivere una parola su San Francesco, egli vorrà certamente parole migliori delle proprie per parlare dell’amicizia di San Francesco e Santa Chiara. Ho spesso osservato che i misteri di questa storia si esprimono meglio simbolicamente in certi silenziosi atteggiamenti e atti. E non conosco simbolo migliore di quello trovato dalla felicità della leggenda popolare, la quale narra che una notte la gente di Assisi credette che gli alberi e la santa casa fossero in fiamme, e accorse per spegnere l’incendio. Ma trovarono tutto quieto all’interno, dove San Francesco spezzava il pane con Santa Chiara in uno dei loro rari incontri, e parlava dell’amore di Dio. Sarebbe difficile trovare un’immagine più immaginosa, per una qualche sorta di passione del tutto pura e disincarnata, di quell’alone rosso attorno alle inconsapevoli figure sul colle; una fiamma che si nutre di nulla e mette a fuoco l’aria stessa.
But if the Second Order was the memorial of such an unearthly love, the Third Order was as solid a memorial of a very solid sympathy with earthly loves and earthly lives. The whole of this feature in Catholic life, the lay orders in touch with clerical orders, is very little understood in Protestant countries and very little allowed for in Protestant history. The vision which has been so faintly suggested in these pages has never been confined to monks or even to friars. It has been an inspiration to innumerable crowds of ordinary married men and women; living lives like our own, only entirely different. That morning glory which St. Francis spread over the earth and sky has lingered as a secret sunshine under a multitude of roofs and in a multitude of rooms. In societies like ours nothing is known of such a Franciscan following. Nothing is known of such obscure followers; and if possible less is known of the well-known followers. If we imagine passing us in the street a pageant of the Third Order of St. Francis, the famous figures would surprise us more than the strange ones. For us it would be like the unmasking of some mighty secret society. There rides St. Louis, the great king, lord of the higher justice whose scales hang crooked in favour of the poor. There is Dante crowned with laurel, the poet who in his life of passions sang the praises of the Lady Poverty, whose grey garment is lined with purple and all glorious within. All sorts of great names from the most recent and rationalistic centuries would stand revealed; the great Galvani, for instance, the father of all electricity, the magician who has made so many modern systems of stars and sounds. So various a following would alone be enough to prove that St. Francis had no lack of sympathy with normal men, if the whole of his own life did not prove it.
But in fact his life did prove it, and that possibly in a more subtle sense. There is, I fancy, some truth in the hint of one of his modern biographers, that even his natural passions were singularly normal and even noble, in the sense of turning towards things not unlawful in themselves but only unlawful for him. Nobody ever lived of whom we could less fitly use the word “regret” than Francis of Assisi. Though there was much that was romantic, there was nothing in the least sentimental about his mood. It was not melancholy enough for that. He was of far too swift and rushing a temper to be troubled with doubts and reconsiderations about the race he ran; though he had any amount of self-reproach about not running faster. But it is true, one suspects, that when he wrestled with the devil, as every man must to be worth calling a man, the whispers referred mostly to those healthy instincts that he would have approved for others; they bore no resemblance to that ghastly painted paganism which sent its demoniac courtesans to plague St. Anthony in the desert. If St. Francis had only pleased himself, it would have been with simpler pleasures. He was moved to love rather than lust, and by nothing wilder than wedding bells. It is suggested in that strange story of how he defied the devil by making images in the snow, and crying out that these sufficed him for a wife and family. It is suggested in the saying he used when disclaiming any security from sin, “I may yet have children”; almost as if it was of the children rather than the woman that he dreamed. And this, if it be true, gives a final touch to the truth about his character. There was so much about him of the spirit of the morning, so much that was curiously young and clean, that even what was bad in him was good. As it was said of others that the light in their body was darkness, so it may be said of this luminous spirit that the very shadows in his soul were of light. Evil itself could not come to him save in the form of a forbidden good; and he could only be tempted by a sacrament.
Ma se il Secondo Ordine fu il memoriale di un amore così ultraterreno, il Terzo Ordine fu un memoriale altrettanto solido di una simpatia assai solida verso gli amori terreni e le vite terrene. Tutto questo tratto della vita cattolica, gli ordini laici in contatto con gli ordini clericali, è assai poco compreso nei paesi protestanti e assai poco considerato nella storia protestante. La visione che è stata così debolmente accennata in queste pagine non è mai stata confinata ai monaci, e neppure ai frati. È stata un’ispirazione per innumerevoli folle di comuni uomini e donne sposati; che vivevano vite come la nostra, solo del tutto diverse. Quella gloria mattutina che San Francesco diffuse sulla terra e sul cielo si è attardata come un sole segreto sotto una moltitudine di tetti e in una moltitudine di stanze. In società come la nostra nulla si sa di un simile seguito francescano. Nulla si sa di tali oscuri seguaci; e, se possibile, meno ancora si sa dei seguaci ben noti. Se immaginassimo che ci passasse accanto per la strada un corteo del Terzo Ordine di San Francesco, le figure famose ci sorprenderebbero più di quelle sconosciute. Per noi sarebbe come lo smascheramento di una potente società segreta. Ecco cavalcare San Luigi, il grande re, signore di quella più alta giustizia le cui bilance pendono storte in favore dei poveri. Ecco Dante incoronato d’alloro, il poeta che nella sua vita di passioni cantò le lodi di Madonna Povertà, la cui grigia veste è foderata di porpora e tutta gloriosa al di dentro. Ogni sorta di grandi nomi, financo dai secoli più recenti e razionalistici, apparirebbe rivelata; il grande Galvani, per esempio, il padre di tutta l’elettricità, il mago che ha creato tanti moderni sistemi di stelle e di suoni. Un seguito così vario basterebbe da solo a provare che San Francesco non mancava affatto di simpatia per gli uomini normali, se già tutta la sua vita non lo provasse.
Ma di fatto la sua vita lo provò, e forse in un senso più sottile. Vi è, immagino, qualche verità nell’accenno di uno dei suoi biografi moderni, secondo cui perfino le sue passioni naturali erano singolarmente normali e persino nobili, nel senso di volgersi verso cose non illecite in se stesse ma illecite soltanto per lui. Non visse mai nessuno per cui potremmo usare meno a proposito la parola «rimpianto» che per Francesco d’Assisi. Benché vi fosse molto di romantico in lui, non vi era nulla di sentimentale nel suo umore. Non era abbastanza malinconico per questo. Era di tempra troppo rapida e impetuosa per lasciarsi turbare da dubbi e ripensamenti sulla corsa che correva; per quanto avesse ogni sorta di auto-rimprovero per non correre più veloce. Ma è vero, si sospetta, che quando lottò col demonio, come ogni uomo deve fare per meritare il nome di uomo, i sussurri si riferivano per lo più a quei sani istinti che egli avrebbe approvato negli altri; non avevano alcuna somiglianza con quel ghignante paganesimo dipinto che mandava le sue cortigiane indemoniate a tormentare Sant’Antonio nel deserto. Se San Francesco avesse solo assecondato se stesso, sarebbe stato con piaceri più semplici. Era mosso all’amore piuttosto che alla lussuria, e da nulla di più selvaggio che campane nuziali. Lo si intuisce in quella strana storia di come sfidò il demonio facendo figure nella neve, e gridando che quelle gli bastavano come moglie e famiglia. Lo si intuisce nel detto che usava quando negava ogni sicurezza dal peccato: «Potrei ancora avere figli»; quasi come se fosse dei figli, più che della donna, che sognava. E ciò, se è vero, dà un tocco finale alla verità sul suo carattere. Vi era in lui tanto dello spirito del mattino, tanto di curiosamente giovane e puro, che perfino ciò che in lui era cattivo era buono. Come si disse di altri che la luce nel loro corpo era tenebra, così si può dire di questo spirito luminoso che le ombre stesse nella sua anima erano di luce. Il male stesso non poteva venire a lui se non nella forma di un bene proibito; ed egli poteva essere tentato soltanto da un sacramento.
Chapter VIII
No man who has been given the freedom of the Faith is likely to fall into those hole-and corner extravagances in which later degenerate Franciscans, or rather Fraticelli, sought to concentrate entirely on St. Francis as a second Christ, the creator of a new gospel. In fact any such notion makes nonsense of every motive in the man’s life; for no man would reverently magnify what he was meant to rival, or only profess to follow what he existed to supplant. On the contrary, as will appear later, this little study would rather specially insist that it was really the papal sagacity that saved the great Franciscan movement for the whole world and the universal Church, and prevented it from petering out as that sort of stale and second rate sect that is called a new religion. Everything that is written here must be understood not only as distinct from but diametrically opposed to the idolatry of the Fraticelli. The difference between Christ and St. Francis was the difference between the Creator and the creature; and certainly no creature was ever so conscious of that colossal contrast as St. Francis himself. But subject to this understanding, it is perfectly true and it is vitally important that Christ was the pattern on which St. Francis sought to fashion himself; and that at many points their human and historical lives were even curiously coincident; and above all, that compared to most of us at least St. Francis is a most sublime approximation to his Master, and, even in being an intermediary and a reflection, is a splendid and yet a merciful Mirror of Christ. And this truth suggests another, which I think has hardly been noticed; but which happens to be a highly forcible argument for the authority of Christ being continuous in the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Newman wrote in his liveliest controversial work a sentence that might be a model of what we mean by saying that his creed tends to lucidity and logical courage. In speaking of the ease with which truth may be made to look like its own shadow or sham, he said, “And if Antichrist is like Christ, Christ I suppose is like Antichrist.” Mere religious sentiment might well be shocked at the end of the sentence; but nobody could object to it except the logician who said that Ceasar and Pompey were very much alike, especially Pompey. It may give a much milder shock if I say here, what most of us have forgotten, that if St. Francis was like Christ, Christ was to that extent like St. Francis. And my present point is that it is really very enlightening to realise that Christ was like St. Francis. What I mean is this; that if men find certain riddles and hard sayings in the story of Galilee, and if they find the answers to those riddles in the story of Assisi, it really does show that a secret has been handed down in one religious tradition and no other. It shows that the casket that was locked in Palestine can be unlocked in Umbria; for the Church is the keeper of the keys.
Now in truth while it has always seemed natural to explain St. Francis in the light of Christ, it has not occurred to many people to explain Christ in the light of St. Francis. Perhaps the word “light” is not here the proper metaphor; but the same truth is admitted in the accepted metaphor of the mirror. St. Francis is the mirror of Christ rather as the moon is the mirror of the sun. The moon is much smaller than the sun, but it is also much nearer to us; and being less vivid it is more visible. Exactly in the same sense St. Francis is nearer to us, and being a mere man like ourselves is in that sense more imaginable. Being necessarily less of a mystery, he does not, for us, so much open his mouth in mysteries. Yet as a matter of fact, many minor things that seem mysteries in the mouth of Christ would seem merely characteristic paradoxes in the mouth of St. Francis. It seems natural to reread the more remote incidents with the help of the more recent ones. It is a truism to say that Christ lived before Christianity; and it follows that as a historical figure. He is a figure in heathen history. I mean that the medium in which He moved was not the medium of Christendom but of the old pagan empire; and from that alone, not to mention the distance of time, it follows that His circumstances are more alien to us than those of an Italian monk such as we might meet even to-day. I suppose the most authoritative commentary can hardly be certain of the current or conventional weight of all His words or phrases; of which of them would then have seemed a common allusion and which a strange fancy. This archaic setting has left many of the sayings standing like hieroglyphics and subject to many and peculiar individual interpretations. Yet it is true of almost any of them that if we simply translate them into the Umbrian dialect of the first Franciscans, they would seem like any other part of the Franciscans story; doubtless in one sense fantastic, but quite familiar. All sorts of critical controversies have revolved round the passage which bids men consider the lilies of the field and copy them in taking no thought for the morrow. The sceptic has alternated between telling us to be true Christians and do it, and explaining that it is impossible to do. When he is a communist as well as an atheist, he is generally doubtful whether to blame us for preaching what is impracticable or for not instantly putting it into practice. I am not going to discuss here the point of ethics and economics; I merely remark that even those who are puzzled at the saying of Christ would hardly pause in accepting it as a saying of St. Francis. Nobody would be surprised to find that he had said, “I beseech you, little brothers, that you be as wise as Brother Daisy and Brother Dandelion; for never do they lie awake thinking of to-morrow, yet they have gold crowns like kings and emperors or like Charlemagne in all his glory.” Even more bitterness and bewilderment has arisen about the command to turn the other cheek and to give the coat to the robber who has taken the cloak. It is widely held to imply the wickedness of war among nations about which, in itself, not a word seems to have been said. Taken thus literally and universally, it much more clearly implies the wickedness of all law and government. Yet there are many prosperous peacemakers who are much more shocked at the idea of using the brute force of soldiers against a powerful foreigner than they are at using the brute force of policemen against a poor fellow-citizen. Here again I am content to point out that the paradox becomes perfectly human and probable if addressed by Francis to Franciscans. Nobody would be surprised to read that Brother Juniper did then run after the thief that had stolen his hood, beseeching him to take his gown also; for so St. Francis had commanded him. Nobody would be surprised if St. Francis told a young noble, about to be admitted to his company, that so far from pursuing a brigand to recover his shoes, he ought to pursue him to make him a present of his stockings. We may like or not the atmosphere these things imply; but we know what atmosphere they do imply. We recognise a certain note as natural and clear as the note of a bird; the note of St. Francis. There is in it something of gentle mockery of the very idea of possessions; something of a hope of disarming the enemy by generosity; something of a humorous sense of bewildering the worldly with the unexpected; something of the joy of carrying an enthusiastic conviction to a logical extreme. But anyhow we have no difficulty in recognising it if we have read any of the literature of the Little Brothers and the movement that began in Assisi. It seems reasonable to infer that if it was this spirit that made such strange things possible in Umbria, it was the same spirit that made them possible in Palestine. If we hear the same unmistakable note and sense the same indescribable savour in two things at such a distance from each other, it seems natural to suppose that the case that is more remote from our experience was like the case that is closer to our experience. As the thing is explicable on the assumption that Francis was speaking to Franciscans, it is not an irrational explanation to suggest that Christ also was speaking to some dedicated band that had much the same function as Franciscans. In other words, it seems only natural to hold, as the Catholic Church has held, that these counsels of perfection were part of a particular vocation to astonish and awaken the world. But in any case it is important to note that when we do find these particular features, with their seemingly fantastic fitness, reappearing after more than a thousand years, we find them produced by the same religious system which claims continuity and authority from the scenes in which they first appeared. Any number of philosophies will repeat the platitudes of Christianity. But it is the ancient Church that can again startle the world with the paradoxes of Christianity. Ubi Petrus ibi Franciscus.
Capitolo VIII
Nessun uomo a cui sia stata data la libertà della Fede è propenso a cadere in quelle stravaganze cantucci e angoli in cui i francescani più tardi degenerati, o meglio i Fraticelli, cercarono di concentrarsi interamente su San Francesco come un secondo Cristo, il creatore di un nuovo vangelo. In realtà una simile idea rende insensato ogni movente nella vita dell’uomo; poiché nessun uomo magnificherebbe con reverenza ciò che era destinato a rivaleggiare, né professerebbe di seguire soltanto ciò che esisteva per soppiantare. Al contrario, come apparirà più tardi, questo piccolo studio insisterebbe piuttosto in modo speciale sul fatto che fu davvero la sagacia papale a salvare il grande movimento francescano per il mondo intero e per la Chiesa universale, e a impedirgli di dissolversi in quella sorta di setta stantia e di seconda categoria che si chiama una nuova religione. Tutto ciò che qui è scritto va inteso non solo come distinto ma come diametralmente opposto all’idolatria dei Fraticelli. La differenza tra Cristo e San Francesco era la differenza tra il Creatore e la creatura; e certamente nessuna creatura fu mai tanto consapevole di quel colossale contrasto quanto San Francesco stesso. Ma fatta salva questa comprensione, è perfettamente vero ed è di vitale importanza che Cristo fu il modello sul quale San Francesco cercò di plasmare se stesso; e che in molti punti le loro vite umane e storiche furono persino curiosamente coincidenti; e soprattutto che, rispetto alla maggior parte di noi almeno, San Francesco è una assai sublime approssimazione al suo Maestro, e, pur essendo un intermediario e un riflesso, è uno splendido eppure misericordioso Specchio di Cristo. E questa verità ne suggerisce un’altra, che credo sia stata a stento notata; ma che si dà il caso sia un argomento assai vigoroso in favore dell’autorità di Cristo che è continua nella Chiesa Cattolica.
Il cardinale Newman scrisse nella sua più vivace opera polemica una frase che potrebbe essere un modello di ciò che intendiamo dicendo che il suo credo tende alla lucidità e al coraggio logico. Parlando della facilità con cui la verità può essere fatta apparire come la propria ombra o parodia, egli disse: «E se l’Anticristo è simile a Cristo, Cristo suppongo sia simile all’Anticristo». Il mero sentimento religioso potrebbe ben scandalizzarsi alla fine della frase; ma nessuno potrebbe obiettarvi tranne il logico che disse che Cesare e Pompeo si somigliavano molto, specialmente Pompeo. Può dare uno shock assai più lieve se io dico qui, ciò che la maggior parte di noi ha dimenticato, che se San Francesco era simile a Cristo, Cristo era in quella misura simile a San Francesco. E il mio punto attuale è che è davvero assai illuminante rendersi conto che Cristo era simile a San Francesco. Ciò che intendo è questo; che se gli uomini trovano certi enigmi e certe dure sentenze nella storia della Galilea, e se trovano le risposte a quegli enigmi nella storia di Assisi, ciò mostra davvero che un segreto è stato tramandato in una tradizione religiosa e in nessun’altra. Mostra che lo scrigno che fu chiuso a chiave in Palestina può essere aperto in Umbria; poiché la Chiesa è la custode delle chiavi.
Ora, in verità, mentre è sempre sembrato naturale spiegare San Francesco alla luce di Cristo, non è venuto in mente a molti di spiegare Cristo alla luce di San Francesco. Forse la parola «luce» non è qui la metafora appropriata; ma la stessa verità è ammessa nell’accettata metafora dello specchio. San Francesco è lo specchio di Cristo piuttosto come la luna è lo specchio del sole. La luna è assai più piccola del sole, ma è anche assai più vicina a noi; ed essendo meno vivida è più visibile. Esattamente nello stesso senso San Francesco è più vicino a noi, ed essendo un semplice uomo come noi è in quel senso più immaginabile. Essendo necessariamente meno un mistero, egli non apre, per noi, la bocca in misteri tanto quanto Lui. Eppure in realtà molte cose minori che sembrano misteri sulla bocca di Cristo sembrerebbero meri paradossi caratteristici sulla bocca di San Francesco. Sembra naturale rileggere gli episodi più remoti con l’aiuto di quelli più recenti. È un truismo dire che Cristo visse prima del Cristianesimo; e ne consegue che, come figura storica, Egli è una figura della storia pagana. Intendo che il mezzo in cui Egli si muoveva non era il mezzo della cristianità ma quello dell’antico impero pagano; e da ciò soltanto, per non parlare della distanza del tempo, consegue che le Sue circostanze ci sono più estranee di quelle di un monaco italiano quale potremmo incontrare persino oggi. Suppongo che il commento più autorevole possa a stento essere certo del peso corrente o convenzionale di tutte le Sue parole o frasi; di quali di esse sarebbero allora sembrate un’allusione comune e quali una strana fantasia. Questa ambientazione arcaica ha lasciato molti dei detti come geroglifici, soggetti a molte e peculiari interpretazioni individuali. Eppure è vero di quasi ognuno di essi che, se semplicemente li traducessimo nel dialetto umbro dei primi francescani, sembrerebbero come qualsiasi altra parte della storia francescana; senza dubbio in un senso fantastici, ma del tutto familiari. Ogni sorta di controversie critiche si è aggirata attorno al passo che invita gli uomini a considerare i gigli del campo e a imitarli nel non darsi pensiero del domani. Lo scettico ha alternato tra l’esortarci a essere veri cristiani e a farlo, e lo spiegare che è impossibile farlo. Quando è comunista tanto quanto ateo, è generalmente incerto se biasimarci per predicare ciò che è impraticabile o per non metterlo istantaneamente in pratica. Non discuterò qui il punto dell’etica e dell’economia; osservo soltanto che persino coloro che sono sconcertati dal detto di Cristo esiterebbero a stento ad accettarlo come un detto di San Francesco. Nessuno si sorprenderebbe di scoprire che egli avesse detto: «Vi scongiuro, fratellini, di essere saggi come Fratello Margherita e Fratello Tarassaco; poiché essi non giacciono mai svegli pensando al domani, eppure hanno corone d’oro come re e imperatori o come Carlo Magno in tutta la sua gloria». Ancor più amarezza e sconcerto è sorto attorno al comando di porgere l’altra guancia e di dare la giacca al ladro che ha preso il mantello. È largamente ritenuto implicare la malvagità della guerra tra le nazioni, sulla quale, in sé, non pare sia stata detta una parola. Preso così, alla lettera e universalmente, esso implica assai più chiaramente la malvagità di ogni legge e governo. Eppure vi sono molti prosperi pacificatori che si scandalizzano assai più all’idea di usare la forza bruta dei soldati contro un potente straniero di quanto si scandalizzino all’usare la forza bruta dei poliziotti contro un povero concittadino. Anche qui mi accontento di far notare che il paradosso diventa perfettamente umano e probabile se rivolto da Francesco ai francescani. Nessuno si sorprenderebbe di leggere che Fratello Ginepro corse allora dietro al ladro che gli aveva rubato il cappuccio, scongiurandolo di prendere anche la sua tonaca; poiché così San Francesco gli aveva comandato. Nessuno si sorprenderebbe se San Francesco dicesse a un giovane nobile, sul punto di essere ammesso nella sua compagnia, che lungi dall’inseguire un brigante per recuperare le sue scarpe, egli dovrebbe inseguirlo per fargli dono delle sue calze. Ci può piacere o meno l’atmosfera che queste cose implicano; ma sappiamo quale atmosfera esse implichino. Riconosciamo una certa nota naturale e chiara come la nota di un uccello; la nota di San Francesco. Vi è in essa qualcosa di gentile scherno per l’idea stessa dei possedimenti; qualcosa di una speranza di disarmare il nemico con la generosità; qualcosa di un umoristico senso di sconcertare il mondano con l’inatteso; qualcosa della gioia di portare una convinzione entusiasta a un estremo logico. Ma comunque non abbiamo alcuna difficoltà a riconoscerla se abbiamo letto una qualsiasi delle opere dei Fratini e del movimento che cominciò ad Assisi. Sembra ragionevole dedurre che se fu questo spirito a rendere possibili cose tanto strane in Umbria, fu lo stesso spirito a renderle possibili in Palestina. Se udiamo la stessa inconfondibile nota e avvertiamo lo stesso indescrivibile sapore in due cose a tale distanza l’una dall’altra, sembra naturale supporre che il caso più remoto dalla nostra esperienza fosse simile al caso più vicino alla nostra esperienza. Poiché la cosa è spiegabile nell’ipotesi che Francesco parlasse ai francescani, non è una spiegazione irrazionale suggerire che anche Cristo parlasse a una qualche schiera consacrata che aveva pressappoco la stessa funzione dei francescani. In altre parole, sembra soltanto naturale ritenere, come la Chiesa Cattolica ha ritenuto, che questi consigli di perfezione fossero parte di una particolare vocazione a stupire e a risvegliare il mondo. Ma in ogni caso è importante notare che quando troviamo davvero queste particolari caratteristiche, con la loro apparentemente fantastica pertinenza, riapparire dopo più di mille anni, le troviamo prodotte dallo stesso sistema religioso che rivendica continuità e autorità dalle scene in cui esse apparvero per la prima volta. Un numero qualsiasi di filosofie ripeterà i luoghi comuni del Cristianesimo. Ma è l’antica Chiesa che può di nuovo sbalordire il mondo con i paradossi del Cristianesimo. Ubi Petrus ibi Franciscus.
But if we understand that it was truly under the inspiration of his divine Master that St. Francis did these merely quaint or eccentric acts of charity, we must understand that it was under the same inspiration that he did acts of self-denial and austerity. It is clear that these more or less playful parables of the love of men were conceived after a close study of the Sermon on the Mount. But it is evident that he made an even closer study of the silent sermon on that other mountain; the mountain that was called Golgotha. Here again he was speaking the strict historical truth, when he said that in fasting or suffering humiliation he was but trying to do something of what Christ did; and here again it seems probable that as the same truth appears at the two ends of a chain of tradition, the tradition has preserved the truth. But the import of this fact at the moment affects the next phase in the personal history of the man himself.
For as it becomes clearer that his great communal scheme is an accomplished fact and past the peril of an early collapse, as it becomes evident that there already is such a thing as an Order of the Friars Minor, this more individual and intense ambition of St. Francis emerges more and more. So soon as he certainly has followers, he does not compare himself with his followers, towards whom he might appear as a master; he compares himself more and more with his Master, towards whom he appears only as a servant. This, it may be said in passing, is one of the moral and even practical conveniences of the ascetical privilege. Every other sort of superiority may be superciliousness. But the saint is never supercilious, for he is always by hypothesis in the presence of a superior. The objection to an aristocracy is that it is a priesthood without a god. But in any case the service to which St. Francis had committed himself was one which, about this time, he conceived more and more in terms of sacrifice and crucifixion. He was full of the sentiment that he had not suffered enough to be worthy even to be a distant follower of his suffering God. And this passage in his history may really be roughly summarized as the Search for Martyrdom.
This was the ultimate idea in the remarkable business of his expedition among the Saracens in Syria. There were indeed other elements in his conception, which are worthy of more intelligent understanding than they have often received. His idea, of course, was to bring the Crusades in a double sense to their end; that is, to reach their conclusion and to achieve their purpose. Only he wished to do it by conversion and not by conquest; that is, by intellectual and not material means. The modern mind is hard to please; and it generally calls the way of Godfrey ferocious and the way of Francis fanatical. That is, it calls any moral method unpractical, when it has just called any practical method immoral. But the idea of St. Francis was far from being a fanatical or necessarily even an unpractical idea; though perhaps he saw the problem as rather too simple, lacking the learning of his great inheritor, Raymond Lully, who understood more but has been quite as little understood. The way he approached the matter was indeed highly personal and peculiar; but that was true of almost everything he did. It was in one way a simple idea, as most of his ideas were simple ideas. But it was not a silly idea; there was a great deal to be said for it and it might have succeeded. It was, of course, simply the idea that it is better to create Christians than to destroy Moslems. If Islam had been converted, the world would have been immeasurably more united and happy; for one thing, three quarters of the wars of modern history would never have taken place. It was not absurd to suppose that this might be effected, without military force, by missionaries who were also martyrs. The Church had conquered Europe in that way and may yet conquer Asia or Africa in that way. But when all this is allowed for, there is still another sense in which St. Francis was not thinking of Martyrdom as a means to an end, but almost as an end in itself; in the sense that to him the supreme end was to come closer to the example of Christ. Through all his plunging and, restless days ran the refrain: I have not suffered enough; I have not sacrificed enough; I am not yet worthy even of the shadow of the crown of thorns. He wandered about the valleys of the world looking for the hill that has the outline of a skull.
A little while before his final departure for the East a vast and triumphant assembly of the whole order had been held near the Portiuncula; and called the Assembly of the Straw Huts, from the manner in which that mighty army encamped in the field. Tradition says that it was on this occasion that St. Francis met St. Dominic for the first and last time. It also says, what is probable enough, that the practical spirit of the Spaniard was almost appalled at the devout irresponsibility of the Italian, who had assembled such a crowd without organising a commissariat. Dominic the Spaniard was, like nearly every Spaniard, a man with the mind of a soldier. His charity took the practical form of provision and preparation. But, apart from the disputes about faith which such incidents open, he probably did not understand in this case the power of mere popularity produced by mere personality. In all his leaps in the dark, Francis had an extraordinary faculty of falling on his feet. The whole countryside came down like a landslide to provide food and drink for this sort of pious picnic. Peasants brought waggons of wine and game; great nobles walked about doing the work of footmen. It was a very real victory for the Franciscan spirit of a reckless faith not only in God but in man. Of course there is much doubt and dispute about the whole story and the whole relation of Francis and Dominic; and the story of the Assembly of the Straw Huts is told from the Franciscan side. But the alleged meeting is worth mentioning, precisely because it was immediately before St. Francis set forth on his bloodless crusade that he is said to have met St. Dominic, who has been so much criticised for lending himself to a more bloody one. There is no space in this little book to explain how St. Francis, as much as St. Dominic, would ultimately have defended the defence of Christian unity by arms. Indeed it would need a large book instead of a little book to develop that point alone from its first principles. For the modern mind is merely a blank about the philosophy of toleration; and the average agnostic of recent times has really had no notion of what he meant by religious liberty and equality. He took his own ethics as self-evident and enforced them; such as decency or the error of the Adamite heresy. Then he was horribly shocked if he heard of anybody else, Moslem or Christian, taking his ethics as self-evident and enforcing them; such as reverence or the error of the Athiest heresy. And then he wound up by taking all this lop-sided illogical deadlock, of the unconscious meeting the unfamiliar, and called it the liberality of his own mind. Medieval men thought that if a social system was founded on a certain idea it must fight for that idea, whether it was as simple as Islam or as carefully balanced as Catholicism. Modern men really think the same thing, as is clear when communists attack their ideas of property. Only they do not think it so clearly, because they have not really thought out their idea of property. But while it is probable that St. Francis would have reluctantly agreed with St. Dominic that war for the truth was right in the last resort, it is certain that St. Dominic did enthusiastically agree with St. Francis that it was far better to prevail by persuasion and enlightenment if it were possible. St. Dominic devoted himself much more to persuading than to persecuting; but there was a difference in the methods simply because there was a difference in the men. About everything St. Francis did there was something that was in a good sense childish, and even in a good sense wilful. He threw himself into things abruptly, as if they had just occurred to him. He made a dash for his Mediterranean enterprise with something of the air of a schoolboy running away to sea.
Ma se comprendiamo che fu davvero sotto l’ispirazione del suo divino Maestro che san Francesco compì questi atti di carità così bizzarri o eccentrici, dobbiamo comprendere che fu sotto la medesima ispirazione che egli compì atti di rinuncia di sé e di austerità. È chiaro che queste parabole più o meno scherzose dell’amore per gli uomini furono concepite dopo un attento studio del Discorso della Montagna. Ma è evidente che egli fece uno studio ancora più attento del silenzioso discorso su quell’altra montagna: la montagna che fu chiamata Golgota. Anche qui egli diceva la stretta verità storica, quando affermava che nel digiuno o nel patire l’umiliazione altro non faceva che tentare di compiere qualcosa di ciò che fece il Cristo; e anche qui pare probabile che, poiché la stessa verità compare ai due estremi di una catena di tradizione, la tradizione abbia conservato la verità. Ma l’importanza di questo fatto, al momento, riguarda la fase successiva nella storia personale dell’uomo stesso.
Poiché, man mano che diventa più chiaro che il suo grande disegno comunitario è un fatto compiuto e ormai al riparo dal pericolo di un rapido crollo, man mano che diventa evidente che già esiste una cosa quale un Ordine dei Frati Minori, questa ambizione più individuale e intensa di san Francesco emerge sempre di più. Non appena ha con certezza dei seguaci, egli non si paragona ai suoi seguaci, verso i quali potrebbe apparire come un maestro; si paragona sempre di più al suo Maestro, verso il quale appare soltanto come un servo. Questo, sia detto di passaggio, è una delle convenienze morali e persino pratiche del privilegio ascetico. Ogni altra forma di superiorità può essere superciliosità. Ma il santo non è mai superciliano, poiché egli è sempre, per ipotesi, alla presenza di un superiore. L’obiezione contro un’aristocrazia è che essa è un sacerdozio senza un dio. Ma in ogni caso il servizio a cui san Francesco si era votato era di quelli che, in questo tempo, egli concepiva sempre di più in termini di sacrificio e di crocifissione. Era colmo del sentimento di non aver sofferto abbastanza da essere degno anche solo di essere un lontano seguace del suo Dio sofferente. E questo passaggio nella sua storia può davvero essere riassunto, all’ingrosso, come la Ricerca del Martirio.
Fu questa l’idea ultima nella singolare vicenda della sua spedizione tra i Saraceni in Siria. Vi erano invero altri elementi nella sua concezione, degni di una comprensione più intelligente di quanta ne abbiano spesso ricevuta. La sua idea, naturalmente, era di condurre le Crociate in un duplice senso alla loro fine; cioè di raggiungerne la conclusione e di realizzarne lo scopo. Solo che egli desiderava farlo mediante la conversione e non mediante la conquista; cioè con mezzi intellettuali e non materiali. La mente moderna è difficile da accontentare; e generalmente chiama feroce la via di Goffredo e fanatica la via di Francesco. Vale a dire, essa chiama impraticabile ogni metodo morale, subito dopo aver chiamato immorale ogni metodo pratico. Ma l’idea di san Francesco era ben lungi dall’essere un’idea fanatica o necessariamente anche solo impraticabile; benché forse egli vedesse il problema in modo un po’ troppo semplice, mancandogli la dottrina del suo grande erede, Raimondo Lullo, che comprese di più ma è stato compreso altrettanto poco. Il modo in cui affrontò la questione fu invero altamente personale e peculiare; ma ciò valeva per quasi tutto ciò che egli faceva. Era in un certo senso un’idea semplice, come la maggior parte delle sue idee erano idee semplici. Ma non era un’idea sciocca; c’era molto da dire a suo favore e avrebbe potuto riuscire. Era, naturalmente, semplicemente l’idea che è meglio creare cristiani che distruggere musulmani. Se l’Islam fosse stato convertito, il mondo sarebbe stato incommensurabilmente più unito e felice; per una cosa, tre quarti delle guerre della storia moderna non avrebbero mai avuto luogo. Non era assurdo supporre che ciò potesse effettuarsi, senza forza militare, per opera di missionari che fossero anche martiri. La Chiesa aveva conquistato l’Europa in quel modo e potrà ancora conquistare l’Asia o l’Africa in quel modo. Ma quando si è concesso tutto questo, rimane ancora un altro senso in cui san Francesco non pensava al Martirio come a un mezzo per un fine, ma quasi come a un fine in sé; nel senso che per lui il fine supremo era di avvicinarsi all’esempio del Cristo. Attraverso tutti i suoi giorni impetuosi e irrequieti correva il ritornello: non ho sofferto abbastanza; non ho sacrificato abbastanza; non sono ancora degno neppure dell’ombra della corona di spine. Egli vagava per le valli del mondo cercando la collina che ha il profilo di un teschio.
Poco prima della sua partenza definitiva per l’Oriente si era tenuta presso la Porziuncola una vasta e trionfante assemblea dell’intero ordine; e fu chiamata l’Assemblea delle Capanne di Paglia, dal modo in cui quella possente schiera si accampò nella campagna. La tradizione narra che fu in questa occasione che san Francesco incontrò san Domenico per la prima e l’ultima volta. Narra anche, cosa abbastanza probabile, che lo spirito pratico dello spagnolo fu quasi sgomento davanti alla devota irresponsabilità dell’italiano, che aveva radunato una tale folla senza organizzare un’intendenza. Domenico lo spagnolo era, come quasi ogni spagnolo, un uomo con la mente di un soldato. La sua carità assumeva la forma pratica della provvista e della preparazione. Ma, a prescindere dalle dispute sulla fede che tali episodi aprono, egli probabilmente non comprese in questo caso il potere della mera popolarità prodotta dalla mera personalità. In tutti i suoi salti nel buio, Francesco aveva una straordinaria facoltà di cadere in piedi. Tutta la campagna scese come una frana per fornire cibo e bevande a questo genere di pio picnic. I contadini portarono carri di vino e di selvaggina; grandi nobili si aggiravano facendo il lavoro dei lacchè. Fu una vera vittoria per lo spirito francescano di una fede temeraria non solo in Dio ma nell’uomo. Naturalmente vi è molto dubbio e molta disputa su tutta la vicenda e su tutto il rapporto tra Francesco e Domenico; e la storia dell’Assemblea delle Capanne di Paglia è raccontata dalla parte francescana. Ma il preteso incontro merita di essere menzionato, proprio perché fu immediatamente prima che san Francesco partisse per la sua incruenta crociata che si dice egli abbia incontrato san Domenico, tanto criticato per essersi prestato a una più cruenta. Non c’è spazio in questo piccolo libro per spiegare come san Francesco, non meno di san Domenico, avrebbe in ultima analisi difeso la difesa dell’unità cristiana con le armi. Anzi occorrerebbe un grande libro invece di un piccolo libro per sviluppare quel punto soltanto a partire dai suoi primi princìpi. Poiché la mente moderna è semplicemente un vuoto riguardo alla filosofia della tolleranza; e l’agnostico medio dei tempi recenti non ha davvero avuto alcuna nozione di ciò che intendeva per libertà ed eguaglianza religiosa. Egli prendeva la propria etica come evidente di per sé e la imponeva; per esempio la decenza o l’errore dell’eresia adamitica. Poi restava orribilmente scandalizzato se sentiva parlare di qualcun altro, musulmano o cristiano, che prendeva la propria etica come evidente di per sé e la imponeva; per esempio la riverenza o l’errore dell’eresia atea. E poi concludeva prendendo tutto questo squilibrato e illogico vicolo cieco, dell’inconsapevole che incontra l’ignoto, e lo chiamava la liberalità della propria mente. Gli uomini medievali pensavano che, se un sistema sociale era fondato su una certa idea, esso doveva combattere per quell’idea, fosse essa semplice come l’Islam o accuratamente bilanciata come il cattolicesimo. Gli uomini moderni pensano davvero la stessa cosa, come è chiaro quando i comunisti attaccano le loro idee di proprietà. Solo che non lo pensano così chiaramente, perché non hanno davvero elaborato fino in fondo la loro idea di proprietà. Ma mentre è probabile che san Francesco avrebbe a malincuore convenuto con san Domenico che la guerra per la verità fosse giusta come estrema risorsa, è certo che san Domenico convenne con entusiasmo con san Francesco che era di gran lunga meglio prevalere con la persuasione e l’illuminazione, se ciò fosse possibile. San Domenico si dedicò molto più a persuadere che a perseguitare; ma vi era una differenza nei metodi semplicemente perché vi era una differenza negli uomini. In tutto ciò che san Francesco faceva vi era qualcosa che era, in senso buono, infantile, e persino, in senso buono, capriccioso. Egli si gettava nelle imprese all’improvviso, come se gli fossero appena venute in mente. Si lanciò nella sua impresa mediterranea con qualcosa dell’aria di uno scolaretto che scappa per andare per mare.
In the first act of that attempt he characteristically distinguished himself by becoming the Patron Saint of Stowaways. He never thought of waiting for introductions or bargains or any of the considerable backing that he already had from rich and responsible people. He simply saw a boat and threw himself into it, as he threw himself into everything else. It has all that air of running a race which makes his whole life read like an escapade or even literally an escape. He lay like lumber among the cargo, with one companion whom he had swept with him in his rush; but the voyage was apparently unfortunate and erratic and ended in an enforced return to Italy. Apparently it was after this first false start that the great reunion took place at the Portiuncula, and between this and the final Syrian journey there was also an attempt to meet the Moslem menace by preaching to the Moors in Spain. In Spain indeed several of the first Franciscans had already succeeded gloriously in being martyred. But the great Francis still went about stretching out his arms for such torments and desiring that agony in vain. No one would have said more readily than he that he was probably less like Christ than those others who had already found their Calvary; but the thing remained with him like a secret; the strangest of the sorrows of man.
His later voyage was more successful, so far as arriving at the scene of operations was concerned. He arrived at the headquarters of the Crusade which was in front of the besieged city of Damietta, and went on in his rapid and solitary fashion to seek the headquarters of the Saracens. He succeeded in obtaining an interview with the Sultan; and it was at that interview that he evidently offered, and as some say proceeded, to fling himself into the fire as a divine ordeal, defying the Moslem religious teachers to do the same. It is quite certain that he would have done so at a moment’s notice. Indeed throwing himself into the fire was hardly more desperate, in any case, than throwing himself among the weapons and tools of torture of a horde of fanatical Mahometans and asking them to renounce Mahomet. It is said further that the Mahometan muftis showed some coldness towards the proposed competition, and that one of them quietly withdrew while it was under discussion; which would also appear credible. But for whatever reason Francis evidently returned as freely as he came. There may be something in the story of the individual impression produced on the Sultan, which the narrator represents as a sort of secret conversion. There may be something in the suggestion that the holy man was unconsciously protected among half-barbarous Orientals by the halo of sanctity that is supposed in such places to surround an idiot. There is probably as much or more in the more generous explanation of that graceful though capricious courtesy and compassion which mingled with wilder things in the stately Soldans of the type and tradition of Saladin. Finally, there is perhaps something in the suggestion that the tale of St. Francis might be told as a sort of ironic tragedy and comedy called The Man Who Could Not Get Killed. Men liked him too much for himself to let him die for his faith; and the man was received instead of the message. But all these are only converging guesses at a great effort that is hard to judge, because it broke off short like the beginnings of a great bridge that might have united East and West, and remains one of the great might-have-beens of history.
Meanwhile the great movement in Italy was making giant strides. Backed now by papal authority as well as popular enthusiasm, and creating a kind of comradeship among all classes, it had started a riot of reconstruction on all sides of religious and social life; and especially began to express itself in that enthusiasm for building which is the mark of all the resurrections of Western Europe. There had notably been established at Bologna a magnificent mission house of the Friars Minor; and a vast body of them and their sympathisers surrounded it with a chorus of acclamation. Their unanimity had a strange interruption. One man alone in that crowd was seen to turn and suddenly denounce the building as if it had been a Babylonian temple; demanding indignantly since when the Lady Poverty had thus been insulted with the luxury of palaces. It was Francis, a wild figure, returned from his Eastern Crusade; and it was the first and last time that he spoke in wrath to his children.
A word must be said later about this serious division of sentiment and policy, about which many Franciscans, and to some extent Francis himself, parted company with the more moderate policy which ultimately prevailed. At this point we need only note it as another shadow fallen upon his spirit after his disappointment in the desert; and as in some sense the prelude to the next phase of his career, which is the most isolated and the most mysterious. It is true that everything about this episode seems to be covered with some cloud of dispute, even including its date; some writers putting it much earlier in the narrative than this. But whether or no it was chronologically it was certainly logically the culmination of the story, and may best be indicated here. I say indicated for it must be a matter of little more than indication; the thing being a mystery both in the higher moral and the more trivial historical sense. Anyhow the conditions of the affair seem to have been these. Francis and a young companion, in the course of their common wandering, came past a great castle all lighted up with the festivities attending a son of the house receiving the honour of knighthood. This aristocratic mansion, which took its name from Monte Feltro, they entered in their beautiful and casual fashion and began to give their own sort of good news. There were some at least who listened to the saint “as if he had been an angel of God”; among them a gentleman named Orlando of Chiusi, who had great lands in Tuscany and who proceeded to do St. Francis a singular and somewhat picturesque act of courtesy. He gave him a mountain; a thing somewhat unique among the gifts of the world. Presumably the Franciscan rule which forbade a man to accept money had made no detailed provision about accepting mountains. Nor indeed did St. Francis accept it save as he accepted everything, as a temporary convenience rather than a personal possession; but he turned it into a sort of refuge for the eremitical rather than the monastic life; he retired there when he wished for a life of prayer and fasting which he did not ask even his closest friends to follow. This was Alverno of the Apennines, and upon its peak there rests for ever a dark cloud that has a rim or halo of glory.
Nel primo atto di quel tentativo egli si distinse caratteristicamente diventando il Santo Patrono dei Clandestini. Non pensò mai ad attendere presentazioni o accordi o alcuno di quei considerevoli appoggi che già aveva da persone ricche e responsabili. Vide semplicemente una barca e vi si gettò dentro, come si gettava in ogni altra cosa. Tutto ciò ha quell’aria di correre una gara che fa leggere l’intera sua vita come una scappatella o persino, letteralmente, una fuga. Giaceva come zavorra in mezzo al carico, con un solo compagno che aveva trascinato con sé nel suo slancio; ma il viaggio fu apparentemente sfortunato ed erratico e finì con un forzato ritorno in Italia. Apparentemente fu dopo questa prima falsa partenza che ebbe luogo la grande riunione alla Porziuncola, e tra questo e il viaggio siriano finale vi fu anche un tentativo di fronteggiare la minaccia musulmana predicando ai Mori in Spagna. In Spagna, invero, parecchi dei primi francescani erano già riusciti gloriosamente a essere martirizzati. Ma il grande Francesco continuava ad andare in giro tendendo le braccia verso tali tormenti e desiderando invano quell’agonia. Nessuno avrebbe detto più prontamente di lui che egli era probabilmente meno simile al Cristo di quegli altri che avevano già trovato il loro Calvario; ma la cosa rimaneva in lui come un segreto; il più strano dei dolori dell’uomo.
Il suo viaggio successivo fu più coronato da successo, per quanto riguardava l’arrivo sul teatro delle operazioni. Giunse al quartier generale della Crociata che si trovava davanti alla città assediata di Damietta, e proseguì nel suo modo rapido e solitario per cercare il quartier generale dei Saraceni. Riuscì a ottenere un colloquio con il Sultano; e fu in quel colloquio che egli evidentemente si offrì, e come alcuni dicono si accinse, a gettarsi nel fuoco come una prova divina, sfidando i maestri religiosi musulmani a fare altrettanto. È del tutto certo che l’avrebbe fatto in un istante. Anzi, gettarsi nel fuoco non era, in ogni caso, molto più disperato che gettarsi in mezzo alle armi e agli strumenti di tortura di un’orda di fanatici maomettani chiedendo loro di rinnegare Maometto. Si dice inoltre che i mufti maomettani mostrarono una certa freddezza verso la proposta gara, e che uno di loro si ritirò discretamente mentre essa era in discussione; il che apparirebbe pure credibile. Ma per qualunque ragione Francesco evidentemente tornò tanto liberamente quanto era venuto. Vi può essere qualcosa nella storia dell’impressione individuale prodotta sul Sultano, che il narratore rappresenta come una sorta di segreta conversione. Vi può essere qualcosa nel suggerimento che il sant’uomo fosse inconsapevolmente protetto, tra Orientali semibarbari, dall’aureola di santità che in tali luoghi si suppone circondi un idiota. Vi è probabilmente altrettanto o più nella più generosa spiegazione di quella graziosa benché capricciosa cortesia e compassione che si mescolava a cose più selvagge nei maestosi Soldani del tipo e della tradizione di Saladino. Infine, vi è forse qualcosa nel suggerimento che il racconto di san Francesco potrebbe essere narrato come una sorta di ironica tragedia e commedia intitolata L’Uomo Che Non Riusciva a Farsi Uccidere. Gli uomini lo amavano troppo per se stesso per lasciarlo morire per la sua fede; e l’uomo fu accolto al posto del messaggio. Ma tutte queste sono soltanto congetture convergenti su un grande sforzo che è difficile da giudicare, perché si interruppe di colpo come gli inizi di un grande ponte che avrebbe potuto unire Oriente e Occidente, e rimane uno dei grandi avrebbe-potuto-essere della storia.
Nel frattempo il grande movimento in Italia procedeva a passi da gigante. Sostenuto ormai dall’autorità papale così come dall’entusiasmo popolare, e creando una sorta di cameratismo tra tutte le classi, esso aveva dato avvio a una fioritura di ricostruzione su tutti i versanti della vita religiosa e sociale; e in particolare cominciò a esprimersi in quell’entusiasmo per il costruire che è il segno di tutte le risurrezioni dell’Europa occidentale. Era stata in particolare fondata a Bologna una magnifica casa di missione dei Frati Minori; e una vasta schiera di loro e dei loro simpatizzanti la circondava con un coro di acclamazione. La loro unanimità ebbe una strana interruzione. Si vide un uomo solo in quella folla voltarsi e improvvisamente denunciare l’edificio come se fosse stato un tempio babilonese; domandando indignato da quando mai madonna Povertà fosse stata così insultata con il lusso dei palazzi. Era Francesco, una figura selvaggia, tornato dalla sua Crociata orientale; e fu la prima e l’ultima volta che egli parlò con ira ai suoi figli.
Una parola dovrà essere detta più avanti su questa seria divisione di sentimento e di politica, riguardo alla quale molti francescani, e in una certa misura Francesco stesso, si separarono dalla politica più moderata che alla fine prevalse. A questo punto occorre soltanto notarla come un’altra ombra calata sul suo spirito dopo la sua delusione nel deserto; e in un certo senso come il preludio alla fase successiva della sua carriera, che è la più isolata e la più misteriosa. È vero che ogni cosa relativa a questo episodio sembra coperta da qualche nube di disputa, compresa persino la sua data; alcuni scrittori la collocano molto prima, nel racconto, di questo punto. Ma cronologicamente o no, esso fu certamente in senso logico il culmine della storia, e può essere indicato al meglio qui. Dico indicato, poiché deve trattarsi di poco più di un’indicazione; essendo la cosa un mistero sia nel senso morale più alto sia in quello storico più banale. Comunque le condizioni della faccenda paiono essere state queste. Francesco e un giovane compagno, nel corso del loro comune vagabondaggio, passarono presso un grande castello tutto illuminato per i festeggiamenti che accompagnavano un figlio della casa nel ricevere l’onore del cavalierato. Questa dimora aristocratica, che prendeva il nome da Monte Feltro, essi entrarono nella loro bella e disinvolta maniera e cominciarono a dare la loro particolare buona novella. Vi furono almeno alcuni che ascoltarono il santo «come se fosse stato un angelo di Dio»; tra loro un gentiluomo di nome Orlando di Chiusi, che aveva grandi terre in Toscana e che si accinse a compiere verso san Francesco un singolare e alquanto pittoresco atto di cortesia. Gli donò una montagna; una cosa alquanto unica tra i doni del mondo. Presumibilmente la regola francescana che vietava a un uomo di accettare denaro non aveva provveduto in dettaglio circa l’accettare montagne. Né invero san Francesco l’accettò se non come accettava ogni cosa, come una temporanea comodità piuttosto che un possesso personale; ma la trasformò in una sorta di rifugio per la vita eremitica piuttosto che monastica; vi si ritirava quando desiderava una vita di preghiera e di digiuno che non chiedeva neppure ai suoi amici più intimi di seguire. Questa era l’Alverna degli Appennini, e sulla sua vetta riposa per sempre una nube oscura che ha un orlo o un’aureola di gloria.
What it was exactly that happened there may never be known. The matter has been, I believe, a subject of dispute among the most devout students of the saintly life as well as between such students and others of the more secular sort. It may be that St. Francis never spoke to a soul on the subject; it would be highly characteristic, and it is certain in any case that he said very little; I think he is only alleged to have spoken of it to one man. Subject however to such truly sacred doubts, I will confess that to me personally this one solitary and indirect report that has come down to us reads very like the report of something real; of some of those things that are more real than what we call daily realities. Even something as it were double and bewildering about the image seems to carry the impression of an experience shaking the senses; as does the passage in Revelation about the supernatural creatures full of eyes. It would seem that St. Francis beheld the heavens above him occupied by a vast winged being like a seraph spread out like a cross. There seems some mystery about whether the winged figure was itself crucified or in the posture of crucifixion, or whether it merely enclosed in its frame of wings some colossal crucifix. But it seems clear that there was some question of the former impression; for St. Bonaventura distinctly says that St. Francis doubted how a seraph could be crucified, since those awful and ancient principalities were without the infirmity of the Passion. St. Bonaventura suggests that the seeming contradiction may have meant that St. Francis was to be crucified as a spirit since he could not be crucified as a man; but whatever the meaning of the vision, the general idea of it is very vivid and overwhelming. St. Francis saw above him, filling the whole heavens, some vast immemorial unthinkable power, ancient like the Ancient of Days, whose calm men had conceived under the forms of winged bulls or monstrous cherubim, and all that winged wonder was in pain like a wounded bird. This seraphic suffering, it is said, pierced his soul with a sword of grief and pity; it may be inferred that some sort of mounting agony accompanied the ecstasy. Finally after some fashion the apocalypse faded from the sky and the agony within subsided; and silence and the natural air filled the morning twilight and settled slowly in the purple chasms and cleft abysses of the Apennines. The head of the solitary sank, amid all that relaxation and quiet in which time can drift by with the sense of something ended and complete; and as he stared downwards, he saw the marks of nails in his own hands.
Che cosa esattamente sia accaduto là non potrà forse mai sapersi. La questione è stata, credo, oggetto di disputa tra i più devoti studiosi della vita santa non meno che tra tali studiosi e altri di specie più profana. Può darsi che san Francesco non abbia mai parlato ad anima viva dell’argomento; sarebbe altamente caratteristico, ed è certo in ogni caso che disse assai poco; credo che se ne alleghi il racconto a un solo uomo. Fatti salvi però tali dubbi veramente sacri, confesserò che a me personalmente questo solitario e indiretto resoconto che ci è giunto suona assai come il resoconto di qualcosa di reale; di alcune di quelle cose che sono più reali di ciò che chiamiamo realtà quotidiane. Persino qualcosa come di doppio e sconcertante nell’immagine sembra recare l’impronta di un’esperienza che scuote i sensi; come fa il passo dell’Apocalisse sulle creature soprannaturali piene d’occhi. Sembrerebbe che san Francesco abbia visto i cieli sopra di sé occupati da un vasto essere alato simile a un serafino disteso come una croce. Pare vi sia qualche mistero sul fatto che la figura alata fosse essa stessa crocifissa o nella postura della crocifissione, o se racchiudesse soltanto nella cornice delle sue ali qualche colossale crocifisso. Ma sembra chiaro che vi fosse qualche questione circa la prima impressione; poiché san Bonaventura dice distintamente che san Francesco dubitò come un serafino potesse essere crocifisso, giacché quelle tremende e antiche principalità erano senza l’infermità della Passione. San Bonaventura suggerisce che l’apparente contraddizione possa aver significato che san Francesco doveva essere crocifisso come spirito poiché non poteva essere crocifisso come uomo; ma qualunque fosse il senso della visione, l’idea generale di essa è assai viva e travolgente. San Francesco vide sopra di sé, colmando l’intero firmamento, una qualche vasta immemorabile impensabile potenza, antica come l’Antico dei Giorni, che gli uomini avevano concepito nelle sembianze di tori alati o mostruosi cherubini, e tutta quella alata meraviglia era in pena come un uccello ferito. Questa serafica sofferenza, si dice, gli trafisse l’anima con una spada di dolore e di pietà; se ne può dedurre che una sorta di montante agonia accompagnasse l’estasi. Infine, in qualche modo, l’apocalisse sbiadì dal cielo e l’agonia interiore si acquietò; e il silenzio e l’aria naturale colmarono il crepuscolo mattutino e si posarono lentamente nei purpurei abissi e nelle fenditure spaccate degli Appennini. Il capo del solitario si chinò, in mezzo a tutto quel rilassamento e quella quiete in cui il tempo può scorrere via col senso di qualcosa di finito e compiuto; e mentre fissava in basso, vide i segni dei chiodi nelle sue proprie mani.
Chapter IX
MIRACLES AND DEATH
The tremendous story of the Stigmata of St. Francis, which was the end of the last chapter, was in some sense the end of his life. In a logical sense, it would have been the end even if it had happened at the beginning. But truer traditions refer it to a later date and suggest that his remaining days on the earth had something about them of the lingering of a shadow. Whether St. Bonaventura was right in his hint that St. Francis saw in that seraphic vision something almost like a vast mirror of his own soul, that could at least suffer like an angel though not like a god, or whether it expressed under an imagery more primitive and colossal than common Christian art the primary paradox of the death of God, it is evident from its traditional consequences that it was meant for a crown and for a seal. It seems to have been after seeing this vision that he began to go blind.
But the incident has another and much less important place in this rough and limited outline. It is the natural occasion for considering briefly and collectively all the facts or fables of another aspect of the life of St. Francis; an aspect which is, I will not say more disputable, but certainly more disputed. I mean all that mass of testimony and tradition that concerns his miraculous powers and supernatural experiences, with which it would have been easy to stud and bejewel every page of the story; only that certain circumstances necessary to the conditions of this narration make it better to gather, somewhat hastily, all such jewels into a heap.
I have here adopted this course in order to make allowance for a prejudice. It is indeed to a great extent a prejudice of the past; a prejudice that is plainly disappearing in days of greater enlightenment, and especially of a greater range of scientific experiment and knowledge. But it is a prejudice that is still tenacious in many of an older generation and still traditional in many of the younger. I mean, of course, what used to be called the belief “that miracles do not happen,” as I think Matthew Arnold expressed it, in expressing the standpoint of so many of our Victorian uncles and great-uncles. In other words it was the remains of that sceptical simplification by which some of the philosophers of the early eighteenth century had popularised the impression (for a very short time) that we had discovered the regulations of the cosmos like the works of a clock, of so very simple a clock that it was possible to distinguish almost at a glance what could or could not have happened in human experience. It should be remembered that these real sceptics, of the golden age of scepticism, were quite as scornful of the first fancies of science as of the lingering legends of religion. Voltaire, when he was told that a fossil fish had been found on the peaks of the Alps, laughed openly at the tale and said that some fasting monk or hermit had dropped his fish-bones there; possibly in order to effect another monkish fraud. Everybody knows by this time that science has had its revenge on scepticism. The border between the credible and the incredible has not only become once more as vague as in any barbaric twilight; but the credible is obviously increasing and the incredible shrinking. A man in Voltaire’s time did not know what miracle he would next have to throw up. A man in our time does not know what miracle he will next have to swallow.
But long before these things had happened, in those days of my boyhood when I first saw the figure of St. Francis far away in the distance and drawing me even at that distance, in those Victorian days which did seriously separate the virtues from the miracles of the saints---even in those days I could not help feeling vaguely puzzled about how this method could be applied to history. Even then I did not quite understand, and even now I do not quite understand, on what principle one is to pick and choose in the chronicles of the past which seem to be all of a piece. All our knowledge of certain historical periods, and notably of the whole medieval period, rests on certain connected chronicles written by people who are some of them nameless and all of them dead, who cannot in any case be cross-examined and cannot in some cases be corroborated. I have never been quite clear about the nature of the right by which historians accepted masses of detail from them as definitely true, and suddenly denied their truthfulness when one detail was preternatural. I do not complain of their being sceptics; I am puzzled about why the sceptics are not more sceptical. I can understand their saying that these details would never have been included in a chronicle except by lunatics or liars; but in that case the only inference is that the chronicle was written by liars or lunatics. They will write for instance: “Monkish fanaticism found it easy to spread the report that miracles were already being worked at the tomb of Thomas Becket.” Why should they not say equally well, “Monkish fanaticism found it easy to spread the slander that four knights from King Henry’s court had assassinated Thomas Becket in the cathedral”? They would write something like this: “The credulity of the age readily believed that Joan of Arc had been inspired to point out the Dauphin although he was in disguise.” Why should they not write on the same principle: “The credulity of the age was such as to suppose that an obscure peasant girl could get an audience at the court of the Dauphin”? And so, in the present case, when they tell us there is a wild story that St. Francis flung himself into the fire and emerged scathless, upon what precise principle are they forbidden to tell us of a wild story that St. Francis flung himself into the camp of the ferocious Moslems and returned safe? I only ask for information; for I do not see the rationale of the thing myself. I will undertake to say there was not a word written of St. Francis by any contemporary who was himself incapable of believing and telling a miraculous story. Perhaps it is all monkish fables and there never was any St. Francis or any St. Thomas Becket or any Joan of Arc. This is undoubtedly a reductio ad absurdum; but it is a reductio ad absurdum of the view which thought all miracles absurd.
Capitolo IX
MIRACOLI E MORTE
La tremenda vicenda delle Stimmate di san Francesco, che fu la fine del capitolo precedente, fu in un certo senso la fine della sua vita. In senso logico, sarebbe stata la fine anche se fosse accaduta all’inizio. Ma tradizioni più fedeli la riferiscono a una data più tarda e suggeriscono che i suoi giorni rimanenti sulla terra avessero in sé qualcosa dell’indugiare di un’ombra. Che san Bonaventura avesse ragione nel suo accenno che san Francesco vedesse in quella visione serafica qualcosa di quasi simile a un vasto specchio della propria anima, che poteva almeno soffrire come un angelo benché non come un dio, oppure che essa esprimesse, sotto un’immagine più primitiva e colossale dell’arte cristiana comune, il paradosso primario della morte di Dio, è evidente dalle sue conseguenze tradizionali che essa era intesa come una corona e come un sigillo. Pare sia stato dopo aver visto questa visione che egli cominciò a diventare cieco.
Ma l’episodio ha un altro e ben meno importante posto in questo rozzo e limitato abbozzo. È l’occasione naturale per considerare brevemente e collettivamente tutti i fatti o le favole di un altro aspetto della vita di san Francesco; un aspetto che è, non dirò più discutibile, ma certamente più discusso. Intendo tutta quella massa di testimonianze e di tradizioni che concerne i suoi poteri miracolosi e le sue esperienze soprannaturali, con cui sarebbe stato facile costellare e ingemmare ogni pagina della storia; se non fosse che certe circostanze necessarie alle condizioni di questa narrazione rendono meglio raccogliere, in modo alquanto affrettato, tutti questi gioielli in un mucchio.
Ho qui adottato questo procedimento al fine di far posto a un pregiudizio. È invero, in gran parte, un pregiudizio del passato; un pregiudizio che sta chiaramente scomparendo in giorni di maggiore illuminazione, e specialmente di una più ampia gamma di esperimenti e conoscenze scientifiche. Ma è un pregiudizio ancora tenace in molti di una generazione più anziana e ancora tradizionale in molti dei più giovani. Intendo, naturalmente, ciò che si usava chiamare la convinzione «che i miracoli non accadono», come credo l’abbia espresso Matthew Arnold, nell’esprimere il punto di vista di tanti nostri zii e prozii vittoriani. In altre parole era il residuo di quella semplificazione scettica con cui alcuni dei filosofi del primo Settecento avevano diffuso l’impressione (per un tempo brevissimo) che avessimo scoperto le regole del cosmo come i meccanismi di un orologio, di un orologio così semplice che era possibile distinguere quasi a colpo d’occhio ciò che poteva o non poteva essere accaduto nell’esperienza umana. Va ricordato che questi veri scettici, dell’età dell’oro dello scetticismo, erano tanto sprezzanti verso le prime fantasie della scienza quanto verso le persistenti leggende della religione. Voltaire, quando gli fu detto che sulle vette delle Alpi era stato trovato un pesce fossile, rise apertamente del racconto e disse che qualche monaco o eremita digiunante vi aveva lasciato cadere le sue lische; forse allo scopo di realizzare un’altra frode monacale. Tutti sanno ormai che la scienza ha avuto la sua rivincita sullo scetticismo. Il confine tra il credibile e l’incredibile non solo è tornato a essere vago come in qualsiasi barbarico crepuscolo; ma il credibile va manifestamente crescendo e l’incredibile restringendosi. Un uomo del tempo di Voltaire non sapeva quale miracolo avrebbe dovuto rigettare per il prossimo. Un uomo del nostro tempo non sa quale miracolo dovrà inghiottire per il prossimo.
Ma molto prima che queste cose accadessero, in quei giorni della mia fanciullezza in cui vidi per la prima volta la figura di san Francesco lontano in lontananza e che mi attraeva persino a quella distanza, in quei giorni vittoriani che separavano seriamente le virtù dai miracoli dei santi — persino in quei giorni non potevo fare a meno di sentirmi vagamente perplesso su come questo metodo potesse essere applicato alla storia. Persino allora non capivo del tutto, e persino ora non capisco del tutto, in base a quale principio si debba scegliere e selezionare, nelle cronache del passato, ciò che pare essere tutto di un pezzo. Tutta la nostra conoscenza di certi periodi storici, e in particolare dell’intero periodo medievale, poggia su certe cronache concatenate scritte da persone alcune delle quali senza nome e tutte quante morte, che in nessun caso possono essere sottoposte a controinterrogatorio e che in alcuni casi non possono essere corroborate. Non mi è mai stata ben chiara la natura del diritto per cui gli storici accettassero da esse masse di dettagli come sicuramente veri, e improvvisamente ne negassero la veridicità quando un dettaglio era preternaturale. Non mi lamento del loro essere scettici; sono perplesso sul perché gli scettici non siano più scettici. Posso capire che dicano che questi dettagli non sarebbero mai stati inclusi in una cronaca se non da folli o da bugiardi; ma in tal caso l’unica inferenza è che la cronaca fu scritta da bugiardi o da folli. Essi scriveranno per esempio: «Il fanatismo monacale trovò facile diffondere la notizia che già si operavano miracoli presso la tomba di Thomas Becket». Perché non dovrebbero dire altrettanto bene: «Il fanatismo monacale trovò facile diffondere la calunnia che quattro cavalieri della corte di re Enrico avessero assassinato Thomas Becket nella cattedrale»? Scriverebbero qualcosa di simile a questo: «La credulità dell’epoca credette facilmente che Giovanna d’Arco fosse stata ispirata a indicare il Delfino benché egli fosse travestito». Perché non dovrebbero scrivere secondo lo stesso principio: «La credulità dell’epoca era tale da supporre che un’oscura contadina potesse ottenere udienza alla corte del Delfino»? E così, nel caso presente, quando ci dicono che c’è una storia stravagante secondo cui san Francesco si gettò nel fuoco e ne uscì illeso, in base a quale preciso principio è loro vietato di raccontarci una storia stravagante secondo cui san Francesco si gettò nell’accampamento dei feroci musulmani e ne tornò salvo? Chiedo soltanto informazioni; poiché io stesso non vedo la ragionevolezza della cosa. Mi impegno a dire che non fu scritta una parola su san Francesco da alcun contemporaneo che fosse egli stesso incapace di credere e di raccontare una storia miracolosa. Forse sono tutte favole monacali e non ci fu mai alcun san Francesco né alcun san Thomas Becket né alcuna Giovanna d’Arco. Questa è indubbiamente una reductio ad absurdum; ma è una reductio ad absurdum della tesi che riteneva assurdi tutti i miracoli.
And in abstract logic this method of selection would lead to the wildest absurdities. An intrinsically incredible story could only mean that the authority was unworthy of credit. It could not mean that other parts of his story must be received with complete credulity. If somebody said he had met a man in yellow trousers, who proceeded to jump down his own throat, we should not exactly take our Bible oath or be burned at the stake for the statement that he wore yellow trousers. If somebody claimed to have gone up in a blue balloon and found that the moon was made of green cheese, we should not exactly take an affidavit that the balloon was blue any more than that the moon was green. And the really logical conclusion from throwing doubts on all tales like the miracles of St. Francis was to throw doubts on the existence of men like St. Francis. And there really was a modern moment, a sort of high-water mark of insane scepticism, when this sort of thing was really said or done. People used to go about saying that there was no such person as St. Patrick; which is every bit as much of a human and historical howler as saying there was no such person as St. Francis. There was a time, for instance, when the madness of mythological explanation had dissolved a large part of solid history under the universal and luxuriant warmth and radiance of the Sun-Myth. I believe that that particular sun has already set, but there have been any number of moons and meteors to take its place.
St. Francis, of course, would make a magnificent Sun-Myth. How could anybody miss the chance of being a Sun-Myth when he is actually best known by a song called The Canticle of the Sun? It is needless to point out that the fire in Syria was the dawn in the East and the bleeding wounds in Tuscany the sunset in the West. I could expound this theory at considerable length; only, as so often happens to such fine theorists, another and more promising theory occurs to me. I cannot think how everybody, including myself, can have overlooked the fact that the whole tale of St. Francis is of Totemistic origin. It is unquestionably a tale that simply swarms with totems. The Franciscan woods are as full of them as any Red Indian fable. Francis is made to call himself an ass, because in the original mythos Francis was merely the name given to the real four-footed donkey, afterwards vaguely evolved into a half-human god or hero. And that, no doubt, is why I used to feel that the Brother Wolf and Sister Bird of St. Francis were somehow like the Brer Fox and Sis Cow of Uncle Remus. Some say there is an innocent stage of infancy in which we do really believe that a cow talked or a fox made a tar baby. Anyhow there is an innocent period of intellectual growth in which we do sometimes really believe that St. Patrick was a Sun-Myth or St. Francis a Totem. But for the most of us both those phases of paradise are past.
As I shall suggest in a moment, there is one sense in which we can for practical purposes distinguish between probable and improbable things in such a story. It is not so much a question of cosmic criticism about the nature of the event as of literary criticism about the nature of the story. Some stories are told much more seriously than others. But apart from this, I shall not attempt here any definite differentiation between them. I shall not do so for a practical reason affecting the utility of the proceeding; I mean the fact that in a practical sense the whole of this matter is again in the melting pot, from which many things may emerge moulded into what rationalism would have called monsters. The fixed points of faith and philosophy do indeed remain always the same. Whether a man believes that fire in one case could fail to burn depends on why he thinks it generally does burn. If it burns nine sticks out of ten because it is its nature or doom to do so, then it will burn the tenth stick as well. If it burns nine sticks because it is the will of God that it should, then it might be the will of God that the tenth should be unburned. Nobody can get behind that fundamental difference about the reason of things; and it is as rational for a theist to believe in miracles as for an atheist to disbelieve in them. In other words there is only one intelligent reason why a man does not believe in miracles and that is that he does believe in materialism. But these fixed points of faith and philosophy are things for a theoretical work and have no particular place here. And in the matter of history and biography, which have their place here, nothing is fixed at all. The world is in a welter of the possible and impossible, and nobody knows what will be the next scientific hypothesis to support some ancient superstition. Three-quarters of the miracles attributed to St. Francis would already be explained by psychologists, not indeed as a Catholic explains them, but as a materialist must necessarily refuse to explain them. There is one whole department of the miracles of St. Francis; the miracles of healing. What is the good of a superior sceptic throwing them away as unthinkable, at the moment when faith-healing is already a big booming Yankee business like Barnum’s Show? There is another whole department analogous to the tales of Christ “perceiving men’s thoughts.” What is the use of censoring them and blacking them out because they are marked “miracles,” when thought reading is already a parlour game like musical chairs? There is another whole department, to be studied separately if such scientific study were possible, of the well-attested wonders worked from his relics and fragmentary possessions. What is the use of dismissing all that as inconceivable, when even these common psychical parlour tricks turn perpetually upon touching some familiar object or holding in the hand some personal possession? I do not believe, of course, that these tricks are of the same type as the good works of the saint; save perhaps in the sense of Diabolus simius Dei. But it is not a question of what I believe and why, but of what the sceptic disbelieves and why. And the moral for the practical biographer and historian is that he must wait till things settle down a little more, before he claims to disbelieve anything.
E nella logica astratta questo metodo di selezione porterebbe alle assurdità più stravaganti. Una storia intrinsecamente incredibile potrebbe solo significare che l’autorità non è degna di credito. Non potrebbe significare che altre parti della sua storia devono essere accolte con completa credulità. Se qualcuno dicesse di aver incontrato un uomo in pantaloni gialli, che poi ha saltato giù per la propria gola, non presteremmo esattamente il nostro giuramento sulla Bibbia o saremmo bruciati sul rogo per l’affermazione che indossava pantaloni gialli. Se qualcuno affermasse di essere salito su un pallone blu e avesse scoperto che la luna era fatta di formaggio verde, non presteremmo esattamente un giuramento solenne sul fatto che il pallone fosse blu più di quanto lo sia il fatto che la luna fosse verde. E la conclusione veramente logica dal mettere in dubbio tutte le storie come i miracoli di San Francesco sarebbe stata quella di mettere in dubbio l’esistenza di uomini come San Francesco. E c’è stato davvero un momento moderno, una sorta di segno distintivo dell’insana scetticismo, quando questo genere di cose veniva veramente detto o fatto. La gente andava in giro dicendo che non esisteva una persona come San Patrizio; il che è altrettanto assurdo dal punto di vista umano e storico quanto dire che non esistesse una persona come San Francesco. C’è stato un tempo, per esempio, in cui la pazzia della spiegazione mitologica aveva dissolto gran parte della solida storia sotto il calore universale e la radianza lussureggiante del Mito Solare. Credo che quel sole particolare sia già tramontato, ma ci sono state qualsiasi quantità di lune e meteore a prendere il suo posto.
San Francesco, naturalmente, sarebbe un magnifico Mito Solare. Come si potrebbe perdere l’occasione di essere un Mito Solare quando è in realtà più noto per una canzone chiamata Il Cantico del Sole? Non serve sottolineare che il fuoco in Siria era l’alba in Oriente e le ferite sanguinanti in Toscana erano il tramonto in Occidente. Potrei sviluppare questa teoria a lungo; solo, come spesso accade ai fini teorici, mi viene in mente un’altra teoria più promettente. Non riesco a capire come tutti, incluso me stesso, abbiano potuto trascurare il fatto che l’intera storia di San Francesco è di origine Totemistica. È indiscutibilmente una storia che pullula semplicemente di totem. I boschi francescani ne sono pieni quanto qualsiasi fiaba dei Pellerossa. Si fa in modo che Francesco si chiami asino, perché nel mito originale Francesco era semplicemente il nome dato al vero asino a quattro zampe, poi vagamente evoluto in un dio o eroe semi-umano. E questo, senza dubbio, è il motivo per cui ho sempre sentito che il Fratello Lupo e la Sorella Uccello di San Francesco erano in qualche modo simili al Brer Fox e alla Sis Cow dello Zio Remus. Alcuni dicono che esiste una fase innocente dell’infanzia in cui crediamo davvero che una mucca parlasse o che una volpe creasse un bambino di pece. Comunque sia, c’è un periodo innocente della crescita intellettuale in cui a volte crediamo davvero che San Patrizio fosse un Mito Solare o San Francesco un Totem. Ma per la maggior parte di noi entrambe queste fasi del paradiso sono passate.
Come suggerirò tra un momento, c’è un senso in cui possiamo distinguere per scopi pratici tra cose probabili e improbabili in una storia del genere. Non è tanto questione di critica cosmica sulla natura dell’evento quanto di critica letteraria sulla natura della storia. Alcune storie vengono raccontate molto più seriamente di altre. Ma a parte questo, non tenterò qui alcuna differenziazione definitiva tra loro. Non lo farò per una ragione pratica che riguarda l’utilità dell’operazione; intendo il fatto che in senso pratico tutta questa questione è di nuovo nel calderone, da cui molte cose possono emergere modellate in ciò che il razionalismo avrebbe chiamato mostri. I punti fissi della fede e della filosofia rimangono infatti sempre gli stessi. Se un uomo crede che nel caso specifico il fuoco potesse non bruciare, dipende da perché pensa che in generale brucia. Se brucia nove bastoncini su dieci perché è la sua natura o il suo destino farlo, allora brucerà anche il decimo bastoncino. Se brucia nove bastoncini perché è volontà di Dio che lo faccia, allora potrebbe essere volontà di Dio che il decimo non venga bruciato. Nessuno può andare oltre quella differenza fondamentale sulla ragione delle cose; ed è tanto razionale per un teista credere nei miracoli quanto per un ateo non crederci. In altre parole, c’è solo una ragione intelligente per cui un uomo non crede nei miracoli e questa è che crede nel materialismo. Ma questi punti fissi della fede e della filosofia sono cose da un lavoro teorico e qui non hanno un posto particolare. E per quanto riguarda la questione di storia e biografia, che qui trovano il loro posto, nulla è fisso. Il mondo è in un turbine del possibile e dell’impossibile, e nessuno sa quale sarà l’ipotesi scientifica successiva a sostenere qualche antica superstizione. Tre quarti dei miracoli attribuiti a San Francesco sarebbero già spiegati dai psicologi, non certo come li spiega un cattolico, ma come un materialista deve necessariamente rifiutare di spiegarli. C’è un intero settore dei miracoli di San Francesco; i miracoli della guarigione. A che serve per uno scettico superiore scartarli come impensabili, nel momento in cui la fede-guarigione è già una grande e fiorente attività yankee come lo spettacolo di Barnum? C’è un altro intero settore analogo ai racconti di Cristo “che percepisce i pensieri degli uomini”. A che serve censurarli e cancellarli perché sono contrassegnati come “miracoli”, quando la lettura del pensiero è già un gioco da salotto come le sedie musicali? C’è un altro intero settore, da studiare separatamente se tale studio scientifico fosse possibile, dei prodigi ben attestati compiuti dalle sue reliquie e dai suoi possedimenti frammentari. A che serve scartare tutto ciò come inconcepibile, quando anche questi comuni trucchi psichici di salotto si basano costantemente sul toccare qualche oggetto familiare o tenere in mano qualche possesso personale? Naturalmente non credo che questi trucchi siano dello stesso tipo delle buone opere del santo; forse nel senso di Diabolus simius Dei. Ma non si tratta di ciò in cui credo e perché, bensì di ciò in cui lo scettico non crede e perché. E la morale per il biografo pratico e lo storico è che deve aspettare che le cose si stabilizzino un po’ di più, prima di pretendere di non credere a nulla.
This being so he can choose between two courses; and not without some hesitation, I have here chosen between them. The best and boldest course would be to tell the whole story in a straightforward way, miracles and all, as the original historians told it. And to this sane and simple course the new historians will probably have to return. But it must be remembered that this book is avowedly only an introduction to St. Francis or the study of St. Francis. Those who need an introduction are in their nature strangers. With them the object is to get them to listen to St. Francis at all; and in doing so it is perfectly legitimate so to arrange the order of the facts that the familiar come before the unfamiliar and those they can at once understand before those they have a difficulty in understanding. I should only be too thankful if this thin and scratchy sketch contains a line or two that attracts men to study St. Francis for themselves; and if they do study him for themselves, they will soon find that the supernatural part of the story seems quite as natural as the rest. But it was necessary that my outline should be a merely human one, since I was only presenting his claim on all humanity, including sceptical humanity. I therefore adopted the alternative course, of showing first that nobody but a born fool could fail to realise that Francis of Assisi was a very real historical human being; and then summarising briefly in this chapter the superhuman powers that were certainly a part of that history and humanity. It only remains to say a few words about some distinctions that may reasonably be observed in the matter by any man of any views; that he may not confuse the point and climax of the saint’s life with the fancies or rumours that were really only the fringes of his reputation.
There is so immense a mass of legends and anecdotes about St. Francis of Assisi, and there are so many admirable compilations that cover nearly all of them, that I have been compelled within these narrow limits to pursue a somewhat narrow policy; that of following one line of explanation and only mentioning one anecdote here or there because it illustrates that explanation. If this is true about all the legends and stories, it is especially true about the miraculous legends and the supernatural stories. If we were to take some stories as they stand, we should receive a rather bewildered impression that the biography contains more supernatural events than natural ones. Now it is clean against Catholic tradition, co-incident in so many points with common sense, to suppose that this is really the proportion of these things in practical human life. Moreover, even considered as supernatural or preternatural stories, they obviously fall into certain different classes, not so much by our experience of miracles as by our experience of stories. Some of them have the character of fairy stories in their form even more than their incident. They are obviously tales told by the fire to peasants or the children of peasants, under conditions in which nobody thinks he is propounding a religious doctrine to be received or rejected, but only rounding off a story in the most symmetrical way, according to that sort of decorative scheme or pattern that runs through all fairy stories. Others are obviously in their form most emphatically evidence; that is they are testimony that is truth or lies; and it will be very hard for any judge of human nature to think they are lies.
It is admitted that the story of the Stigmata is not a legend but can only be a lie. I mean that it is certainly not a late legendary accretion added afterwards to the fame of St. Francis; but is something that started almost immediately with his earliest biographers. It is practically necessary to suggest that it was a conspiracy; indeed there has been some disposition to put the fraud upon the unfortunate Elias, whom so many parties have been disposed to treat as a useful universal villain. It has been said, indeed, that these early biographers, St. Bonaventura and Celano and the Three Companions, though they declare that St. Francis received the mystical wounds, do not say that they themselves saw those wounds. I do not think this argument conclusive; because it only arises out of the very nature of the narrative. The Three Companions are not in any case making an affidavit; and therefore none of the admitted parts of their story are in the form of an affidavit. They are writing a chronicle of a comparatively impersonal and very objective description. They do not say, “I saw St. Francis’s wounds”; they say, “St. Francis received wounds.” But neither do they say, “I saw St. Francis go into the Portiuncula”; they say, “St. Francis went into the Portiuncula.” But I still cannot understand why they should be trusted as eye-witnesses about the one fact and not trusted as eye-witnesses about the other. It is all of a piece; it would be a most abrupt and abnormal interruption in their way of telling the story if they suddenly began to curse and to swear, and give their names and addresses, and take their oath that they themselves saw and verified the physical facts in question. It seems to me, therefore, that this particular discussion goes back to the general question I have already mentioned; the question of why these chronicles should be credited at all, if they are credited with abounding in the incredible. But that again will probably be found to revert, in the last resort, to the mere fact that some men cannot believe in miracles because they are materialists. That is logical enough; but they are bound to deny the preternatural as much in the testimony of a modern scientific professor as in that of a medieval monkish chronicler. And there are plenty of professors for them to contradict by this time.
Stando così le cose, egli può scegliere tra due vie; e non senza qualche esitazione, ho qui scelto tra esse. La via migliore e più ardita sarebbe di raccontare l’intera storia in modo schietto, miracoli e tutto, come la raccontarono gli storici originari. E a questa via sana e semplice i nuovi storici dovranno probabilmente ritornare. Ma va ricordato che questo libro è dichiaratamente soltanto un’introduzione a san Francesco, ovvero allo studio di san Francesco. Coloro che hanno bisogno di un’introduzione sono per loro natura estranei. Con essi lo scopo è indurli ad ascoltare san Francesco del tutto; e nel farlo è perfettamente legittimo disporre l’ordine dei fatti in modo tale che il familiare venga prima del non familiare e ciò che essi possono subito comprendere prima di ciò che hanno difficoltà a comprendere. Sarei fin troppo grato se questo esile e sbiadito abbozzo contenesse una riga o due che attraggano gli uomini a studiare san Francesco da sé; e se essi lo studieranno da sé, scopriranno presto che la parte soprannaturale della storia sembra del tutto naturale quanto il resto. Ma era necessario che il mio profilo fosse un profilo meramente umano, giacché presentavo soltanto la sua istanza su tutta l’umanità, compresa l’umanità scettica. Adottai perciò la via alternativa, di mostrare anzitutto che nessuno se non uno sciocco nato potrebbe non rendersi conto che Francesco d’Assisi fu un essere umano storico ben reale; e poi di riassumere brevemente in questo capitolo i poteri sovrumani che facevano certamente parte di quella storia e di quell’umanità. Rimane soltanto da dire qualche parola su alcune distinzioni che ragionevolmente possono essere osservate nella materia da qualsiasi uomo di qualsiasi opinione; affinché egli non confonda il punto e il culmine della vita del santo con le fantasie o le dicerie che erano davvero soltanto le frange della sua fama.
Vi è una massa così immensa di leggende e aneddoti su san Francesco d’Assisi, e vi sono così tante ammirevoli compilazioni che li coprono quasi tutti, che sono stato costretto entro questi angusti limiti a seguire una politica alquanto ristretta; quella di seguire un’unica linea di spiegazione e di menzionare solo un aneddoto qua o là perché illustra quella spiegazione. Se ciò è vero riguardo a tutte le leggende e le storie, è specialmente vero riguardo alle leggende miracolose e alle storie soprannaturali. Se prendessimo alcune storie così come stanno, ne riceveremmo un’impressione alquanto sconcertata, che la biografia contenga più eventi soprannaturali che naturali. Ora è del tutto contrario alla tradizione cattolica, coincidente in tanti punti con il buon senso, supporre che questa sia davvero la proporzione di queste cose nella vita umana pratica. Inoltre, anche considerate come storie soprannaturali o preternaturali, esse ricadono manifestamente in certe classi differenti, non tanto per la nostra esperienza dei miracoli quanto per la nostra esperienza delle storie. Alcune di esse hanno il carattere delle fiabe nella loro forma ancor più che nel loro contenuto. Sono manifestamente racconti narrati presso il fuoco ai contadini o ai figli dei contadini, in condizioni in cui nessuno pensa di proporre una dottrina religiosa da accogliere o rifiutare, ma soltanto di arrotondare una storia nel modo più simmetrico, secondo quel genere di schema o disegno decorativo che percorre tutte le fiabe. Altre sono manifestamente, nella loro forma, testimonianza nel modo più enfatico; cioè sono testimonianze che sono verità o menzogne; e sarà molto difficile per qualsiasi conoscitore della natura umana ritenere che siano menzogne.
È ammesso che la storia delle Stimmate non è una leggenda ma può soltanto essere una menzogna. Intendo che essa non è certo una tarda accrescenza leggendaria aggiunta in seguito alla fama di san Francesco; ma è qualcosa che cominciò quasi immediatamente con i suoi primi biografi. È praticamente necessario supporre che si trattasse di una cospirazione; anzi vi è stata una certa disposizione a scaricare la frode sull’infelice Elia, che tante fazioni sono state disposte a trattare come un utile cattivo universale. Si è detto, invero, che questi primi biografi, san Bonaventura e Celano e i Tre Compagni, benché dichiarino che san Francesco ricevette le mistiche ferite, non dicono di aver visto essi stessi quelle ferite. Non credo che questo argomento sia conclusivo; perché esso sorge soltanto dalla natura stessa della narrazione. I Tre Compagni non stanno in ogni caso facendo un affidavit; e perciò nessuna delle parti ammesse della loro storia è nella forma di un affidavit. Essi stanno scrivendo una cronaca di descrizione comparativamente impersonale e assai oggettiva. Non dicono: «Io vidi le ferite di san Francesco»; dicono: «San Francesco ricevette le ferite». Ma neppure dicono: «Io vidi san Francesco entrare nella Porziuncola»; dicono: «San Francesco entrò nella Porziuncola». Ma continuo a non capire perché essi debbano essere creduti come testimoni oculari riguardo all’uno dei fatti e non creduti come testimoni oculari riguardo all’altro. È tutto di un pezzo; sarebbe un’interruzione assai brusca e anomala nel loro modo di raccontare la storia se improvvisamente cominciassero a imprecare e a giurare, e a dare nomi e indirizzi, e a prestare giuramento di aver visto e verificato essi stessi i fatti fisici in questione. Mi pare, dunque, che questa particolare discussione risalga alla questione generale che ho già menzionato; la questione del perché queste cronache debbano essere accreditate del tutto, se sono accreditate di abbondare nell’incredibile. Ma anche questo si scoprirà probabilmente ricondursi, in ultima analisi, al mero fatto che alcuni uomini non possono credere ai miracoli perché sono materialisti. Ciò è abbastanza logico; ma essi sono tenuti a negare il preternaturale tanto nella testimonianza di un moderno professore di scienze quanto in quella di un medievale cronista monacale. E vi sono un mucchio di professori che essi possono contraddire, ormai.
But whatever may be thought of such supernaturalism in the comparatively material and popular sense of supernatural acts, we shall miss the whole point of St. Francis, especially of St. Francis after Alverno, if we do not realise that he was living a supernatural life. And there is more and more of such supernaturalism in his life as he approaches towards his death. This element of the supernatural did not separate him from the natural; for it was the whole point of his position that it united him more perfectly to the natural. It did not make him dismal or dehumanised; for it was the whole meaning of his message that such mysticism makes a man cheerful and humane. But it was the whole point of his position, and it was the whole meaning of his message, that the power that did it was a supernatural power. If this simple distinction were not apparent from the whole of his life, it would be difficult for any one to miss it in reading the account of his death.
In a sense he may be said to have wandered as a dying man, just as he had wandered as a living one. As it became more and more apparent that his health was failing, he seems to have been carried from place to place like a pageant of sickness or almost like a pageant of mortality. He went to Rieti, to Nursia, perhaps to Naples, certainly to Cortona by the lake of Perugia. But there is something profoundly pathetic, and full of great problems, in the fact that at last, as it would seem, his flame of life leapt up and his heart rejoiced when they saw afar off on the Assisian hill the solemn pillars of the Portiuncula. He who had become a vagabond for the sake of a vision, he who had denied himself all sense of place and possession, he whose whole gospel and glory it was to be homeless, received like a Parthian shot from nature, the sting of the sense of home. He also had his maladie du clocher, his sickness of the spire; though his spire was higher than ours. “Never,” he cried with the sudden energy of strong spirits in death, “never give up this place. If you would go anywhere or make any pilgrimage, return always to your home, for this is the holy house of God.” And the procession passed under the arches of his home; and he lay down on his bed and his brethren gathered round him for the last long vigil. It seems to me no moment for entering into the subsequent disputes about which successors he blessed or in what form and with what significance. In that one mighty moment he blessed us all.
After he had taken farewell of some of his nearest an especially some of his oldest friends, he was lifted at his own request off his own rude bed and laid on the bare ground; as some say clad only in a hair-shirt, as he had first gone forth into the wintry woods from the presence of his father. It was the final assertion of his great fixed idea; of praise and thanks springing to their most towering height out of nakedness and nothing. As he lay there we may be certain that his seared and blinded eyes saw nothing but their object and their origin. We may be sure that the soul, in its last inconceivable isolation, was face to face with nothing less than God Incarnate and Christ Crucified. But for the men standing around him there must have been other thoughts mingling with these; and many memories must have gathered like ghosts in the twilight, as that day wore on and that great darkness descended in which we all lost a friend. For what lay dying there was not Dominic of the Dogs of God, a leader in logical and controversial wars that could be reduced to a plan and handed on like a plan; a master of a machine of democratic discipline by which others could organise themselves. What was passing from the world was a person; a poet; an outlook on life like a light that was never after on sea or land; a thing not to be replaced or repeated while the earth endures. It has been said that there was only one Christian, who died on the cross; it is truer to say in this sense that there was only one Franciscan, whose name was Francis. Huge and happy as was the popular work he left behind him, there was something that he could not leave behind, any more than a landscape painter can leave his eyes in his will. It was an artist in life who was here called to be an artist in death; and he had a better right than Nero, his anti-type, to say Qualis artifexpereo. For Nero’s life was full of posing for the occasion like that of an actor; while the Umbrian’s had a natural and continuous grace like that of an athlete. But St. Francis had better things to say and better things to think about, and his thoughts were caught upwards where we cannot follow them, in divine and dizzy heights to which death alone can lift us up.
Round about him stood the brethren in their brown habits, those that had loved him even if they afterwards disputed with each other. There was Bernard, his first friend, and Angelo, who had served as his secretary, and Elias, his successor, whom tradition tried to turn into a sort of Judas, but who seems to have been little worse than an official in the wrong place. His tragedy was that he had a Franciscan habit without a Franciscan heart, or at any rate with a very un-Franciscan head. But though he made a bad Franciscan, he might have made a decent Dominican. Anyhow, there is no reason to doubt that he loved Francis, for ruffians and savages did that. Anyhow he stood among the rest as the hours passed and the shadows lengthened in the house of the Portiuncula; and nobody need think so ill of him as to suppose that his thoughts were then in the tumultuous future, in the ambitions and controversies of his later years.
A man might fancy that the birds must have known when it happened; and made some motion in the evening sky. As they had once, according to the tale, scattered to the four winds of heaven in the pattern of a cross at his signal of dispersion, they might now have written in such dotted lines a more awful augury across the sky. Hidden in the woods perhaps were little cowering creatures never again to be so much noticed and understood; and it has been said that animals are sometimes conscious of things to which man, their spiritual superior, is for the moment blind. We do not know whether any shiver passed through all the thieves and the outcasts and the outlaws, to tell them what had happened to him who never knew the nature of scorn.
But at least in the passages and porches of the Portiuncula there was a sudden stillness, where all the brown figures stood like bronze statues; for the stopping of the great heart that had not broken till it held the world.
Ma qualunque cosa si pensi di tale soprannaturalismo nel senso comparativamente materiale e popolare di atti soprannaturali, mancheremo del tutto il punto essenziale di san Francesco, specialmente di san Francesco dopo l’Alverna, se non ci rendiamo conto che egli viveva una vita soprannaturale. E vi è sempre più di tale soprannaturalismo nella sua vita man mano che egli si avvicina alla sua morte. Questo elemento del soprannaturale non lo separava dal naturale; poiché era proprio il punto essenziale della sua posizione che esso lo univa più perfettamente al naturale. Non lo rendeva tetro o disumanizzato; poiché era proprio il significato del suo messaggio che tale misticismo rende l’uomo lieto e umano. Ma era proprio il punto essenziale della sua posizione, ed era proprio il significato del suo messaggio, che la potenza che lo faceva era una potenza soprannaturale. Se questa semplice distinzione non risultasse evidente dall’insieme della sua vita, sarebbe difficile per chiunque non coglierla nel leggere il racconto della sua morte.
In un certo senso si può dire che egli vagò da moribondo, proprio come aveva vagato da vivo. Man mano che divenne sempre più evidente che la sua salute stava venendo meno, egli pare sia stato trasportato di luogo in luogo come un corteo di malattia o quasi come un corteo di mortalità. Andò a Rieti, a Norcia, forse a Napoli, certamente a Cortona presso il lago di Perugia. Ma vi è qualcosa di profondamente patetico, e colmo di grandi problemi, nel fatto che alla fine, come pare, la sua fiamma di vita divampò e il suo cuore gioì quando videro lontano, sul colle assisiate, i solenni pilastri della Porziuncola. Egli che era divenuto un vagabondo per amore di una visione, egli che aveva negato a se stesso ogni senso di luogo e di possesso, egli il cui intero vangelo e la cui intera gloria era di essere senza casa, ricevette come un dardo dei Parti dalla natura, la fitta del senso della casa. Anch’egli ebbe la sua maladie du clocher, la sua malattia del campanile; benché il suo campanile fosse più alto del nostro. «Mai», gridò con l’improvvisa energia degli spiriti forti nella morte, «mai abbandonate questo luogo. Se volete andare in qualche luogo o compiere qualche pellegrinaggio, tornate sempre alla vostra casa, poiché questa è la santa dimora di Dio». E la processione passò sotto gli archi della sua casa; ed egli si distese sul suo letto e i suoi confratelli si raccolsero intorno a lui per l’ultima lunga veglia. Non mi pare il momento di entrare nelle successive dispute su quali successori egli benedisse o in quale forma e con quale significato. In quell’unico possente momento egli benedisse tutti noi.
Dopo aver preso congedo da alcuni dei suoi più cari e specialmente da alcuni dei suoi più vecchi amici, egli fu sollevato, a sua propria richiesta, dal suo rozzo letto e deposto sulla nuda terra; come alcuni dicono vestito soltanto di un cilicio, come era per la prima volta uscito nei boschi invernali dalla presenza di suo padre. Fu l’affermazione finale della sua grande idea fissa; della lode e del ringraziamento che si slanciano alla loro altezza più svettante fuori dalla nudità e dal nulla. Mentre giaceva là possiamo essere certi che i suoi occhi riarsi e accecati non vedevano nulla se non il loro oggetto e la loro origine. Possiamo essere sicuri che l’anima, nel suo ultimo inconcepibile isolamento, era faccia a faccia con nientemeno che Dio Incarnato e il Cristo Crocifisso. Ma per gli uomini che gli stavano intorno dovevano esservi altri pensieri mescolati a questi; e molte memorie dovevano essersi radunate come fantasmi nel crepuscolo, mentre quel giorno declinava e scendeva quella grande tenebra in cui tutti noi perdemmo un amico. Poiché ciò che là giaceva morente non era Domenico dei Cani di Dio, un condottiero in guerre logiche e controversistiche che potevano essere ridotte a un piano e trasmesse come un piano; un maestro di una macchina di disciplina democratica con cui altri potevano organizzarsi. Ciò che stava passando dal mondo era una persona; un poeta; uno sguardo sulla vita come una luce che non fu mai più su mare o su terra; una cosa da non replicarsi né ripetersi finché la terra durerà. Si è detto che vi fu un solo cristiano, che morì sulla croce; è più vero dire, in questo senso, che vi fu un solo francescano, il cui nome era Francesco. Per quanto immensa e felice fosse l’opera popolare che egli lasciò dietro di sé, vi era qualcosa che egli non poteva lasciare dietro di sé, non più di quanto un paesaggista possa lasciare i propri occhi in eredità. Fu un artista nella vita quegli che qui fu chiamato a essere un artista nella morte; ed egli aveva un diritto migliore di Nerone, il suo anti-tipo, a dire Qualis artifex pereo. Poiché la vita di Nerone era colma di pose per l’occasione come quella di un attore; mentre quella dell’umbro aveva una grazia naturale e continua come quella di un atleta. Ma san Francesco aveva cose migliori da dire e cose migliori a cui pensare, e i suoi pensieri erano rapiti in alto, dove noi non possiamo seguirli, in divine e vertiginose altezze a cui la morte soltanto può sollevarci.
Intorno a lui stavano i confratelli nei loro sai bruni, quelli che lo avevano amato anche se in seguito disputarono tra loro. C’era Bernardo, il suo primo amico, e Angelo, che aveva servito come suo segretario, ed Elia, il suo successore, che la tradizione cercò di trasformare in una sorta di Giuda, ma che pare sia stato poco peggio di un funzionario nel posto sbagliato. La sua tragedia fu che aveva un saio francescano senza un cuore francescano, o comunque con una testa assai poco francescana. Ma benché fosse un cattivo francescano, avrebbe forse fatto un discreto domenicano. Comunque, non vi è ragione di dubitare che egli amasse Francesco, poiché lo fecero anche i furfanti e i selvaggi. Comunque egli stava tra gli altri mentre le ore passavano e le ombre si allungavano nella dimora della Porziuncola; e nessuno ha bisogno di pensare tanto male di lui da supporre che i suoi pensieri fossero allora nel tumultuoso futuro, nelle ambizioni e nelle controversie dei suoi anni successivi.
Un uomo potrebbe immaginare che gli uccelli dovessero aver saputo quando accadde; e aver fatto qualche movimento nel cielo della sera. Come una volta, secondo il racconto, si erano dispersi ai quattro venti del cielo nella figura di una croce al suo segnale di dispersione, così ora avrebbero potuto scrivere in tali linee puntinate un più tremendo augurio attraverso il cielo. Nascoste forse nei boschi vi erano piccole creature acquattate mai più tanto notate e comprese; e si è detto che gli animali sono talvolta consapevoli di cose alle quali l’uomo, loro superiore spirituale, è per il momento cieco. Non sappiamo se qualche brivido percorse tutti i ladri e i reietti e i fuorilegge, per dir loro ciò che era accaduto a colui che non conobbe mai la natura dello scherno.
Ma almeno nei passaggi e nei portici della Porziuncola vi fu un’improvvisa immobilità, dove tutte le figure brune stavano come statue di bronzo; per l’arrestarsi del grande cuore che non si era spezzato finché non ebbe stretto il mondo.
Chapter X
THE TESTAMENT OF ST. FRANCIS
In one sense doubtless it is a sad irony that St. Francis, who all his life had desired all men to agree, should have died amid increasing disagreements. But we must not exaggerate this discord, as some have done, so as to turn it into a mere defeat of all his ideals. There are some who represent his work as having been merely ruined by the wickedness of the world, or what they always assume to be the even greater wickedness of the Church.
This little book is an essay on St. Francis and not on the Franciscan Order, still less on the Catholic Church or the Papacy or the policy pursued towards the extreme Franciscans or the Fraticelli. It is therefore only necessary to note in a very few words what was the general nature of the controversy that raged after the great saint’s death, and to some extent troubled the last days of his life. The dominant detail was the interpretation of the vow of poverty, or the refusal of all possessions. Nobody so far as I know ever proposed to interfere with the vow of the individual friar that he would have no individual possessions. Nobody, that is, proposed to interfere with his negation of private property. But some Franciscans, invoking the authority of Francis on their side, went further than this and further I think than anybody else has ever gone. They proposed to abolish not only private property but property. That is, they refused to be corporately responsible for anything at all; for any buildings or stores or tools; they refused to own them collectively even when they used them collectively. It is perfectly true that many, especially among the first supporters of this view, were men of a splendid and selfless spirit, wholly devoted to the great saint’s ideal. It is also perfectly true that the Pope and the authorities of the Church did not think this conception was a workable arrangement, and went so far in modifying it as to set aside certain clauses in the great saint’s will. But it is not at all easy to see that it was a workable arrangement or even an arrangement at all; for it was really a refusal to arrange anything. Everybody knew of course that Franciscans were communists; but this was not so much being a communist as being an anarchist. Surely upon any argument somebody or something must be answerable for what happened to or in or concerning a number of historic edifices and ordinary goods and chattels. Many idealists of a socialistic sort, notably of the school of Mr. Shaw or Mr. Wells, have treated this dispute as if it were merely a case of the tyranny of wealthy and wicked pontiffs crushing the true Christianity of Christian Socialists. But in truth this extreme ideal was in a sense the very reverse of Socialist, or even social. Precisely the thing which these enthusiasts refused was that social ownership on which Socialism is built; what they primarily refused to do was what Socialists primarily exist to do; to own legally in their corporate capacity. Nor is it true that the tone of the Popes towards the enthusiasts was merely harsh and hostile. The Pope maintained for a long time a compromise which he had specially designed to meet their own conscientious objections, a compromise by which the Papacy itself held the property in a kind of trust for the owners who refused to touch it. The truth is that this incident shows two things which are common enough in Catholic history, but very little understood by the journalistic history of industrial civilisation. It shows that the Saints were sometimes great men when the Popes were small men. But it also shows that great men are sometimes wrong when small men are right. And it will be found, after all, very difficult for any candid and clear-headed outsider to deny that the Pope was right, when he insisted that the world was not made only for Franciscans.
For that was what was behind the quarrel. At the back of this particular practical question there was something much larger and more momentous, the stir and wind of which we can feel as we read the controversy. We might go so far as to put the ultimate truth thus. St. Francis was so great and original a man that he had something in him of what makes the founder of a religion. Many of his followers were more or less ready, in their hearts, to treat him as the founder of a religion. They were willing to let the Franciscan spirit escape from Christendom as the Christian spirit had escaped from Israel. They were willing to let it eclipse Christendom as the Christian spirit had eclipsed Israel. Francis, the fire that ran through the roads of Italy, was to be the beginning of a conflagration in which the old Christian civilisation was to be consumed. That was the point the Pope had to settle; whether Christendom should absorb Francis or Francis Christendom. And he decided rightly, apart from the duties of his place; for the Church could include all that was good in the Franciscans and the Franciscans could not include all that was good in the Church. There is one consideration which, though sufficiently clear in the whole story, has not perhaps been sufficiently noted, especially by those who cannot see the case for a certain Catholic common sense larger even than Franciscan enthusiasm. Yet it arises out of the very merits of the man whom they so rightly admire. Francis of Assisi, as has been said again and again, was a poet; that is, he was a person who could express his personality. Now it is everywhere the mark of this sort of man that his very limitations make him larger. He is what he is, not only by what he has, but in some degree by what he has not. But the limits that make the lines of such a personal portrait cannot be made the limits of all humanity. St. Francis is a very strong example of this quality in the man of genius, that in him even what is negative is positive, because it is part of a character. An excellent example of what I mean may be found in his attitude towards learning and scholarship. He ignored and in some degree discouraged books and book-learning; and from his own point of view and that of his own work in the world he was absolutely right. The whole point of his message was to be so simple that the village idiot could understand it. The whole point of his point of view was that it looked out freshly upon a fresh world, that might have been made that morning. Save for the great primal things, the Creation and the Story of Eden, the first Christmas and the first Easter, the world had no history. But is it desired or desirable that the whole Catholic Church should have no history?
Capitolo X
IL TESTAMENTO DI SAN FRANCESCO
In un certo senso è indubbiamente una triste ironia che san Francesco, che per tutta la vita aveva desiderato che tutti gli uomini fossero d’accordo, sia morto in mezzo a crescenti disaccordi. Ma non dobbiamo esagerare questa discordia, come alcuni hanno fatto, così da trasformarla in una mera sconfitta di tutti i suoi ideali. Vi sono alcuni che rappresentano la sua opera come se fosse stata semplicemente rovinata dalla malvagità del mondo, o da ciò che essi assumono sempre essere l’ancor più grande malvagità della Chiesa.
Questo piccolo libro è un saggio su san Francesco e non sull’Ordine francescano, ancor meno sulla Chiesa cattolica o sul Papato o sulla politica perseguita verso i francescani estremi o i Fraticelli. È perciò necessario notare soltanto in pochissime parole quale fosse la natura generale della controversia che infuriò dopo la morte del grande santo, e in una certa misura turbò gli ultimi giorni della sua vita. Il dettaglio dominante era l’interpretazione del voto di Povertà, ovvero il rifiuto di ogni possesso. Nessuno, per quanto ne so, propose mai di interferire con il voto del singolo frate di non avere possessi individuali. Nessuno, cioè, propose di interferire con la sua negazione della proprietà privata. Ma alcuni francescani, invocando l’autorità di Francesco dalla loro parte, andarono oltre questo e oltre, credo, quanto chiunque altro sia mai andato. Proposero di abolire non solo la proprietà privata ma la proprietà. Cioè, rifiutarono di essere corporativamente responsabili di alcunché; di qualsiasi edificio o deposito o strumento; rifiutarono di possederli collettivamente anche quando li usavano collettivamente. È perfettamente vero che molti, specialmente tra i primi sostenitori di questa tesi, erano uomini di uno spirito splendido e disinteressato, interamente devoti all’ideale del grande santo. È altresì perfettamente vero che il Papa e le autorità della Chiesa non ritennero che questa concezione fosse un assetto praticabile, e giunsero, nel modificarla, fino a mettere da parte certe clausole del testamento del grande santo. Ma non è affatto facile vedere che si trattasse di un assetto praticabile o persino di un assetto qualsiasi; poiché era in realtà un rifiuto di assettare alcunché. Tutti sapevano naturalmente che i francescani erano comunisti; ma questo non era tanto essere comunista quanto essere anarchico. Certo, secondo qualunque ragionamento qualcuno o qualcosa deve essere responsabile di ciò che accadde a, o in, o riguardo a un certo numero di edifici storici e di ordinari beni e masserizie. Molti idealisti di tipo socialista, in particolare della scuola del signor Shaw o del signor Wells, hanno trattato questa disputa come se fosse meramente un caso della tirannia di pontefici ricchi e malvagi che schiacciavano il vero Cristianesimo dei socialisti cristiani. Ma in verità questo ideale estremo era in un certo senso il vero rovescio del socialista, o persino del sociale. Proprio la cosa che questi entusiasti rifiutavano era quella proprietà sociale su cui il socialismo è costruito; ciò che essi anzitutto rifiutavano di fare era ciò che i socialisti esistono anzitutto per fare: possedere legalmente nella loro capacità corporativa. Né è vero che il tono dei Papi verso gli entusiasti fosse meramente aspro e ostile. Il Papa mantenne per lungo tempo un compromesso che aveva appositamente concepito per venire incontro alle loro stesse obiezioni di coscienza, un compromesso per cui il Papato stesso deteneva la proprietà in una sorta di fiducia per i proprietari che rifiutavano di toccarla. La verità è che questo episodio mostra due cose che sono abbastanza comuni nella storia cattolica, ma assai poco comprese dalla storia giornalistica della civiltà industriale. Mostra che i Santi erano talvolta uomini grandi quando i Papi erano uomini piccoli. Ma mostra anche che gli uomini grandi hanno talvolta torto quando gli uomini piccoli hanno ragione. E si scoprirà, dopo tutto, assai difficile per qualsiasi estraneo candido e lucido negare che il Papa avesse ragione, quando insistette che il mondo non era fatto soltanto per i francescani.
Poiché era questo ciò che stava dietro la contesa. Dietro questa particolare questione pratica vi era qualcosa di molto più vasto e di più momentoso, il fremito e il vento del quale possiamo sentire leggendo la controversia. Potremmo giungere a formulare così la verità ultima. San Francesco era un uomo tanto grande e originale che aveva in sé qualcosa di ciò che fa il fondatore di una religione. Molti dei suoi seguaci erano più o meno pronti, in cuor loro, a trattarlo come il fondatore di una religione. Erano disposti a lasciare che lo spirito francescano si sottraesse alla Cristianità come lo spirito cristiano si era sottratto a Israele. Erano disposti a lasciare che esso eclissasse la Cristianità come lo spirito cristiano aveva eclissato Israele. Francesco, il fuoco che corse per le strade d’Italia, doveva essere l’inizio di un incendio in cui l’antica civiltà cristiana doveva essere consumata. Era questo il punto che il Papa doveva risolvere; se la Cristianità dovesse assorbire Francesco o Francesco la Cristianità. Ed egli decise rettamente, a prescindere dai doveri della sua carica; poiché la Chiesa poteva includere tutto ciò che vi era di buono nei francescani e i francescani non potevano includere tutto ciò che vi era di buono nella Chiesa. Vi è una considerazione che, benché abbastanza chiara nell’intera storia, non è stata forse abbastanza notata, specialmente da coloro che non sanno vedere le ragioni di un certo buon senso cattolico ancor più vasto dell’entusiasmo francescano. Eppure essa sorge proprio dai meriti dell’uomo che essi tanto giustamente ammirano. Francesco d’Assisi, come si è detto più e più volte, era un poeta; cioè, era una persona che sapeva esprimere la propria personalità. Ora è ovunque il segno di questo genere d’uomo che le sue stesse limitazioni lo rendono più grande. Egli è ciò che è, non solo per ciò che ha, ma in una certa misura per ciò che non ha. Ma i limiti che tracciano le linee di un tale ritratto personale non possono essere fatti i limiti di tutta l’umanità. San Francesco è un esempio assai forte di questa qualità nell’uomo di genio, che in lui persino ciò che è negativo è positivo, perché è parte di un carattere. Un eccellente esempio di ciò che intendo può trovarsi nel suo atteggiamento verso il sapere e l’erudizione. Egli ignorò e in una certa misura scoraggiò i libri e il sapere libresco; e dal suo proprio punto di vista e da quello della sua propria opera nel mondo aveva assolutamente ragione. Tutto il punto essenziale del suo messaggio era di essere così semplice che l’idiota del villaggio potesse comprenderlo. Tutto il punto essenziale del suo punto di vista era che esso guardava con freschezza a un mondo fresco, che avrebbe potuto essere stato fatto quella stessa mattina. Salvo per le grandi cose primordiali, la Creazione e la Storia dell’Eden, il primo Natale e la prima Pasqua, il mondo non aveva storia. Ma è desiderato o desiderabile che l’intera Chiesa cattolica non abbia storia?
It is perhaps the chief suggestion of this book that St. Francis walked the world like the Pardon of God. I mean that his appearance marked the moment when men could be reconciled not only to God but to nature and, most difficult of all, to themselves. For it marked the moment when all the stale paganism that had poisoned the ancient world was at last worked out of the social system. He opened the gates of the Dark Ages as of a prison of purgatory, where men had cleansed themselves as hermits in the desert or heroes in the barbarian wars. It was in fact his whole function to tell men to start afresh and, in that sense, to tell them to forget. If they were to turn over a new leaf and begin a fresh page with the first large letters of the alphabet, simply drawn and brilliantly coloured in the early mediaeval manner, it was clearly a part of that particular childlike cheerfulness that they should paste down the old page that was all black and bloody with horrid things. For instance, I have already noted that there is not a trace in the poetry of this first Italian poet of all that pagan mythology which lingered long after paganism. The first Italian poet seems the only man in the world who has never even heard of Virgil. This was exactly right for the special sense in which he is the first Italian poet. It is quite right that he should call a nightingale a nightingale, and not have its song spoilt or saddened by the terrible tales of Itylus or Procne. In short, it is really quite right and quite desirable that St. Francis should never have heard of Virgil. But do we really desire that Dante should never have heard of Virgil? Do we really desire that Dante should never have read any pagan mythology? It has been truly said that the use that Dante makes of such fables is altogether part of a deeper orthodoxy; that his huge heathen fragments, his gigantic figures of Minos or of Charon, only give a hint of some enormous natural religion behind all history and from the first foreshadowing the Faith. It is well to have the Sybil as well as David in the Dies Irae. That St. Francis would have burned all the leaves of all the books of the Sybil, in exchange for one fresh leaf from the nearest tree, is perfectly true; and perfectly proper to St. Francis. But it is good to have the Dies Irae as well as the Canticle of the Sun.
By this thesis, in short, the coming of St. Francis was like the birth of a child in a dark house, lifting its doom; a child that grows up unconscious of the tragedy and triumphs over it by his innocence. In him it is necessarily not only innocence but ignorance. It is the essence of the story that he should pluck at the green grass without knowing it grows over a murdered man or climb the apple-tree without knowing it was the gibbet of a suicide. It was such an amnesty and reconciliation that the freshness of the Franciscan spirit brought to all the world. But it does not follow that it ought to impose its ignorance on all the world. And I think it would have tried to impose it on all the world. For some Franciscans it would have seemed right that Franciscan poetry should expel Benedictine prose. For the symbolic child it was quite rational. It was right enough that for such a child the world should be a large new nursery with blank white-washed walls, on which he could draw his own pictures in chalk in the childish fashion, crude in outline and gay in colour; the beginnings of all our art. It was right enough that to him such a nursery should seem the most magnificent mansion of the imagination of man. But in the Church of God are many mansions.
Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church. If the Franciscan movement had turned into a new religion, it would after all have been a narrow religion. In so far as it did turn here and there into a heresy, it was a narrow heresy. It did what heresy always does; it set the mood against the mind. The mood was indeed originally the good and glorious mood of the great St. Francis, but it was not the whole mind of God or even of man. And it is a fact that the mood itself degenerated, as the mood turned into a monomania. A sect that came to be called the Fraticelli declared themselves the true sons of St. Francis and broke away from the compromises of Rome in favour of what they would have called the complete programme of Assisi. In a very little while these loose Franciscans began to look as ferocious as Flagellants. They launched new and violent vetoes; they denounced marriage; that is, they denounced mankind. In the name of the most human of saints they declared war upon humanity. They did not perish particularly through being persecuted; many of them were eventually persuaded; and the unpersuadable rump of them that remained remained without producing anything in the least calculated to remind anybody of the real St. Francis. What was the matter with these people was that they were mystics; mystics and nothing else but mystics; mystics and not Catholics; mystics and not Christians; mystics and not men. They rotted away because, in the most exact sense, they would not listen to reason. And St. Francis, however wild and romantic his gyrations might appear to many, always hung on to reason by one invisible and indestructible hair.
The great saint was sane; and with the very sound of the word sanity, as at a deeper chord struck upon a harp, we come back to something that was indeed deeper than everything about him that seemed an almost elvish eccentricity. He was not a mere eccentric because he was always turning towards the centre and heart of the maze; he took the queerest and most zigzag short cuts through the wood, but he was always going home. He was not only far too humble to be an heresiarch, but he was far too human to desire to be an extremist, in the sense of an exile at the ends of the earth. The sense of humour which salts all the stories of his escapades alone prevented him from ever hardening into the solemnity of sectarian self-righteousness. He was by nature ready to admit that he was wrong; and if his followers had on some practical points to admit that he was wrong, they only admitted that he was wrong in order to prove that he was right. For it is they, his real followers, who have really proved that he was right and even in transcending some of his negations have triumphantly extended and interpreted his truth. The Franciscan order did not fossilise or break off short like something of which the true purpose has been frustrated by official tyranny or internal treason. It was this, the central and orthodox trunk of it, that afterwards bore fruit for the world. It counted among its sons Bonaventura, the great mystic, and Bernardino, the popular preacher, who filled Italy with the very beatific buffooneries of a Jongleur de Dieu. It counted Raymond Lully with his strange learning and his large and daring plans for the conversion of the world; a man intensely individual exactly as St. Francis was intensely individual. It counted Roger Bacon, the first naturalist whose experiments with light and water had all the luminous quaintness that belongs to the beginnings of natural history; and whom even the most material scientists have hailed as a father of science. It is not merely true that these were great men who did great work for the world; it is also true that they were a certain kind of men keeping the spirit and savour of a certain kind of man, that we can recognise in them a taste and tang of audacity and simplicity, and know them for the sons of St. Francis.
È forse il principale suggerimento di questo libro che san Francesco camminò per il mondo come il Perdono di Dio. Intendo che la sua apparizione segnò il momento in cui gli uomini poterono riconciliarsi non solo con Dio ma con la natura e, cosa più difficile di tutte, con se stessi. Poiché segnò il momento in cui tutto lo stantio paganesimo che aveva avvelenato il mondo antico fu finalmente espulso dal sistema sociale. Egli aprì le porte dell’Età Oscura come di una prigione di purgatorio, dove gli uomini si erano purificati come eremiti nel deserto o come eroi nelle guerre barbariche. Fu in effetti la sua intera funzione dire agli uomini di ricominciare da capo e, in quel senso, dir loro di dimenticare. Se dovevano voltare pagina e cominciare una pagina fresca con le prime grandi lettere dell’alfabeto, disegnate con semplicità e colorate con brillantezza alla maniera altomedievale, era chiaramente parte di quella particolare fanciullesca allegria che essi incollassero la vecchia pagina, tutta nera e insanguinata di cose orribili. Per esempio, ho già notato che non vi è traccia, nella poesia di questo primo poeta italiano, di tutta quella mitologia pagana che perdurò a lungo dopo il paganesimo. Il primo poeta italiano sembra l’unico uomo al mondo che non abbia mai neppure sentito parlare di Virgilio. Ciò era esattamente giusto per il senso particolare in cui egli è il primo poeta italiano. È del tutto giusto che egli chiami un usignolo un usignolo, e non ne abbia il canto guastato o rattristato dalle terribili storie di Itilo o di Procne. In breve, è davvero del tutto giusto e del tutto desiderabile che san Francesco non abbia mai sentito parlare di Virgilio. Ma desideriamo davvero che Dante non abbia mai sentito parlare di Virgilio? Desideriamo davvero che Dante non abbia mai letto alcuna mitologia pagana? È stato giustamente detto che l’uso che Dante fa di tali favole è del tutto parte di un’ortodossia più profonda; che i suoi enormi frammenti pagani, le sue gigantesche figure di Minosse o di Caronte, danno soltanto un cenno di qualche enorme religione naturale dietro tutta la storia e che fin dal principio prefigura la Fede. È bene avere la Sibilla non meno che Davide nel Dies Irae. Che san Francesco avrebbe bruciato tutte le foglie di tutti i libri della Sibilla, in cambio di una fresca foglia dall’albero più vicino, è perfettamente vero; e perfettamente proprio di san Francesco. Ma è bene avere il Dies Irae non meno che il Cantico del Sole.
Secondo questa tesi, in breve, la venuta di san Francesco fu come la nascita di un fanciullo in una casa oscura, che ne solleva la condanna; un fanciullo che cresce inconsapevole della tragedia e trionfa su di essa con la sua innocenza. In lui vi è necessariamente non solo innocenza ma ignoranza. È l’essenza della storia che egli colga l’erba verde senza sapere che essa cresce sopra un uomo assassinato, o che si arrampichi sul melo senza sapere che esso fu la forca di un suicida. Fu una tale amnistia e riconciliazione ciò che la freschezza dello spirito francescano portò a tutto il mondo. Ma non ne segue che essa debba imporre la propria ignoranza a tutto il mondo. E credo che avrebbe cercato di imporla a tutto il mondo. Ad alcuni francescani sarebbe parso giusto che la poesia francescana espellesse la prosa benedettina. Per il fanciullo simbolico ciò era del tutto razionale. Era abbastanza giusto che per un tale fanciullo il mondo dovesse essere una grande stanza dei giochi nuova con pareti bianche imbiancate a calce, sulle quali egli potesse disegnare i propri quadri col gesso alla maniera infantile, rozzi nel contorno e gai nel colore; gli inizi di tutta la nostra arte. Era abbastanza giusto che a lui una tale stanza dei giochi dovesse sembrare la più magnifica dimora dell’immaginazione dell’uomo. Ma nella Chiesa di Dio vi sono molte dimore.
Ogni eresia è stata uno sforzo di restringere la Chiesa. Se il movimento francescano si fosse mutato in una nuova religione, sarebbe stato dopo tutto una religione angusta. Nella misura in cui esso qua e là si mutò in un’eresia, fu un’eresia angusta. Fece ciò che l’eresia fa sempre; oppose l’umore alla mente. L’umore era invero in origine il buono e glorioso umore del grande san Francesco, ma non era l’intera mente di Dio né persino dell’uomo. Ed è un fatto che l’umore stesso degenerò, quando l’umore si mutò in monomania. Una setta che giunse a essere chiamata dei Fraticelli si dichiarò i veri figli di san Francesco e si staccò dai compromessi di Roma in favore di ciò che essi avrebbero chiamato il completo programma di Assisi. In assai poco tempo questi sciolti francescani cominciarono a sembrare feroci come Flagellanti. Lanciarono nuovi e violenti veti; denunciarono il matrimonio; cioè, denunciarono l’umanità. Nel nome del più umano dei santi dichiararono guerra all’umanità. Non perirono in particolare per essere stati perseguitati; molti di loro furono alla fine persuasi; e il moncone impersuadibile che ne rimase rimase senza produrre nulla di minimamente atto a ricordare a qualcuno il vero san Francesco. Ciò che non andava in questa gente era che erano mistici; mistici e nient’altro che mistici; mistici e non cattolici; mistici e non cristiani; mistici e non uomini. Marcirono via perché, nel senso più esatto, non volevano ascoltare la ragione. E san Francesco, per quanto selvagge e romantiche potessero apparire a molti le sue giravolte, si tenne sempre aggrappato alla ragione con un capello invisibile e indistruttibile.
Il grande santo era assennato; e col suono stesso della parola senno, come a un accordo più profondo percosso su un’arpa, torniamo a qualcosa che era invero più profondo di tutto ciò che in lui sembrava una quasi elfica eccentricità. Egli non era un mero eccentrico perché si volgeva sempre verso il centro e il cuore del labirinto; prendeva le più bizzarre e più tortuose scorciatoie attraverso il bosco, ma andava sempre verso casa. Non solo era troppo umile per essere un eresiarca, ma era troppo umano per desiderare di essere un estremista, nel senso di un esule ai confini della terra. Il senso dell’umorismo che dà sapore a tutte le storie delle sue scappatelle soltanto gli impedì di indurirsi mai nella solennità della presunzione di sé settaria. Egli era per natura pronto ad ammettere di aver torto; e se i suoi seguaci dovettero, su alcuni punti pratici, ammettere che egli aveva torto, essi ammisero che aveva torto soltanto per provare che aveva ragione. Poiché sono loro, i suoi veri seguaci, che hanno davvero provato che aveva ragione e persino, nel trascendere alcune delle sue negazioni, hanno trionfalmente esteso e interpretato la sua verità. L’ordine francescano non si fossilizzò né si spezzò di colpo come qualcosa il cui vero scopo sia stato frustrato da tirannia ufficiale o da tradimento interno. Fu questo, il tronco centrale e ortodosso di esso, che in seguito portò frutto per il mondo. Contò tra i suoi figli Bonaventura, il grande mistico, e Bernardino, il popolare predicatore, che riempì l’Italia delle beatifiche buffonerie di un Jongleur de Dieu. Contò Raimondo Lullo col suo strano sapere e i suoi vasti e arditi piani per la conversione del mondo; un uomo intensamente individuale esattamente come san Francesco era intensamente individuale. Contò Ruggero Bacone, il primo naturalista i cui esperimenti con la luce e l’acqua avevano tutta la luminosa bizzarria che appartiene agli inizi della storia naturale; e che persino gli scienziati più materialisti hanno salutato come un padre della scienza. Non è solo vero che questi furono grandi uomini che fecero grande opera per il mondo; è anche vero che furono un certo tipo di uomini che serbavano lo spirito e il sapore di un certo tipo di uomo, sicché possiamo riconoscere in loro un gusto e un sentore di audacia e di semplicità, e riconoscerli per i figli di san Francesco.
For that is the full and final spirit in which we should turn to St. Francis; in the spirit of thanks for what he has done. He was above all things a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is called thanksgiving. If another great man wrote a grammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of acceptance; a grammar of gratitude. He understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss. He knew that the praise of God stands on its strongest ground when it stands on nothing. He knew that we can best measure the towering miracle of the mere fact of existence if we realise that but for some strange mercy we should not even exist. And something of that larger truth is repeated in a lesser form in our own relations with so mighty a maker of history. He also is a giver of things we could not have even thought of for ourselves; he also is too great for anything but gratitude. From him came a whole awakening of the world and a dawn in which all shapes and colours could be seen anew. The mighty men of genius who made the Christian civilisation that we know appear in history almost as his servants and imitators. Before Dante was, he had given poetry to Italy; before St. Louis ruled, he had risen as the tribune of the poor; and before Giotto had painted the pictures, he had enacted the scenes. That great painter who began the whole human inspiration of European painting had himself gone to St. Francis to be inspired. It is said that when St. Francis staged in his own simple fashion a Nativity Play of Bethlehem, with kings and angels in the stiff and gay mediaeval garments and the golden wigs that stood for haloes, a miracle was wrought full of the Franciscan glory. The Holy Child was a wooden doll or bambino, and it was said that he embraced it and that the image came to life in his arms. He assuredly was not thinking of lesser things; but we may at least say that one thing came to life in his arms; and that was the thing that we call the drama. Save for his intense individual love of song, he did not perhaps himself embody this spirit in any of these arts. He was the spirit that was embodied. He was the spiritual essence and substance that walked the world, before any one had seen these things in visible forms derived from it: a wandering fire as if from nowhere, at which men more material could light both torches and tapers. He was the soul of mediaeval civilisation before it even found a body. Another and quite different stream of spiritual inspiration derives largely from him; all that reforming energy of mediaeval and modern times that goes to the burden of Deus est Deus Pauperum. His abstract ardour for human beings was in a multitude of just mediaeval laws against the pride and cruelty of riches; it is to-day behind much that is loosely called Christian Socialist and can more correctly be called Catholic Democrat. Neither on the artistic nor the social side would anybody pretend that these things would not have existed without him; yet it is strictly true to say that we cannot now imagine them without him; since he has lived and changed the world.
And something of that sense of impotence which was more than half his power will descend on any one who knows what that inspiration has been in history, and can only record it in a series of straggling and meagre sentences. He will know something of what St. Francis meant by the great and good debt that cannot be paid. He will feel at once the desire to have done infinitely more and the futility of having done anything. He will know what it is to stand under such a deluge of a dead man’s marvels, and have nothing in return to establish against it; to have nothing to set up under the overhanging, overwhelming arches of such a temple of time and eternity, but this brief candle burnt out so quickly before his shrine.
Poiché questo è lo spirito pieno e ultimo con cui dovremmo volgerci a San Francesco: nello spirito della gratitudine per ciò che ha fatto. Egli fu soprattutto un grande donatore; e teneva massimamente al genere migliore di dono, quello che si chiama rendimento di grazie. Se un altro grande uomo scrisse una grammatica dell’assenso, di lui si può ben dire che scrisse una grammatica dell’accettazione; una grammatica della gratitudine. Comprese fino alle sue profondità stesse la teoria del ringraziamento; e le sue profondità sono un abisso senza fondo. Egli sapeva che la lode di Dio poggia sul terreno più saldo quando poggia sul nulla. Sapeva che possiamo misurare al meglio il torreggiante miracolo del semplice fatto dell’esistenza se comprendiamo che, se non fosse per qualche strana misericordia, non esisteremmo nemmeno. E qualcosa di quella più vasta verità si ripete in forma minore nei nostri stessi rapporti con un così possente artefice di storia. Anch’egli è un donatore di cose che non avremmo nemmeno potuto immaginare da noi; anch’egli è troppo grande per qualcosa che non sia gratitudine. Da lui venne un intero risveglio del mondo e un’alba in cui tutte le forme e i colori poterono essere visti di nuovo. I potenti uomini di genio che crearono la civiltà cristiana che conosciamo compaiono nella storia quasi come suoi servitori e imitatori. Prima che Dante fosse, egli aveva dato la poesia all’Italia; prima che San Luigi regnasse, egli si era levato come tribuno dei poveri; e prima che Giotto avesse dipinto i quadri, egli aveva inscenato le scene. Quel grande pittore che diede inizio a tutta l’ispirazione umana della pittura europea era andato egli stesso da San Francesco per essere ispirato. Si narra che, quando San Francesco mise in scena, alla sua semplice maniera, una Natività di Betlemme, con re e angeli nelle rigide e gaie vesti medievali e le parrucche dorate che facevano da aureole, si compì un miracolo colmo della gloria francescana. Il santo Bambino era una bambola o bambino di legno, e si narrava che egli lo abbracciò e che l’immagine prese vita tra le sue braccia. Egli di certo non pensava a cose minori; ma possiamo almeno dire che una cosa prese vita tra le sue braccia; e quella cosa era ciò che chiamiamo il dramma. Salvo il suo intenso e personale amore per il canto, egli forse non incarnò di persona questo spirito in alcuna di queste arti. Egli era lo spirito che veniva incarnato. Egli era l’essenza e la sostanza spirituale che camminava per il mondo, prima che alcuno avesse visto queste cose in forme visibili da esso derivate: un fuoco errante come venuto dal nulla, al quale uomini più materiali poterono accendere torce e candele. Egli era l’anima della civiltà medievale prima ancora che essa trovasse un corpo. Un’altra e assai diversa corrente di ispirazione spirituale deriva in gran parte da lui; tutta quell’energia riformatrice medievale e moderna che si compendia nel motto Deus est Deus Pauperum. Il suo ardore astratto per gli esseri umani era in una moltitudine di giuste leggi medievali contro l’orgoglio e la crudeltà delle ricchezze; oggi sta dietro a molto di ciò che vagamente si chiama socialismo cristiano e più correttamente si può chiamare democrazia cattolica. Né sul versante artistico né su quello sociale qualcuno pretenderebbe che queste cose non sarebbero esistite senza di lui; eppure è rigorosamente vero dire che non possiamo ora immaginarle senza di lui, poiché egli è vissuto e ha mutato il mondo.
E qualcosa di quel senso di impotenza che era più di metà della sua forza discenderà su chiunque sappia che cosa quell’ispirazione sia stata nella storia, e possa solo registrarla in una serie di frasi sconnesse e misere. Egli conoscerà qualcosa di ciò che San Francesco intendeva con il grande e buon debito che non può essere pagato. Sentirà a un tempo il desiderio di aver fatto infinitamente di più e la futilità di aver fatto qualcosa. Saprà che cosa significhi stare sotto un tale diluvio di prodigi di un uomo morto, e non avere nulla in cambio da opporgli; non avere nulla da erigere sotto le arcate incombenti e travolgenti di un tale tempio del Tempo e dell’Eternità, se non questa breve candela consumata così in fretta dinanzi al suo sacrario.