Chesterton- St. Francis

7/28/2019 Chesterton- St. Francis

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St. Francis

by G. K. Chesterton

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM OF ST. FRANCIS

A sketch of St. Francis of Assisi in modern English may be written in oneof three ways. Between these the writer must make his selection; andthe third way, which is adopted here, is in some respects the mostdifficult of all. At least, it would be the most difficult if the other two werenot impossible.First, he may deal with this great and most amazing man as a figure in

secular history and a model of social irtues. !e may describe this diinedemagogue as being, as he probably was, the world"s one #uite sinceredemocrat. !e may say $what means ery little% that St. Francis was inadance of his age. !e may say $what is #uite true% that St. Francisanticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the modern mood;the loe of nature; the loe of animals; the sense of social compassion;the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity and een of property. Allthose things that nobody understood before &ordsworth were familiar toSt. Francis. All those things that were first discoered by 'olstoy couldhae been taken for granted by St Francis. !e could be presented, notonly as a human but a humanitarian hero; indeed as the first hero of

humanism. !e has been described as a sort of morning star of the(enaissance. And in comparison with all these things, his asceticaltheology can be ignored or dismissed as a contempory accident, whichwas fortunately not a fatal accident. !is religion can be regarded as asuperstition, but an ineitable superstition, from which not een geniuscould wholly free itself; in the consideration of which it would be un)ustto condemn St. Francis for his self denial or unduly chide him for hischastity. *t is #uite true that een from so detached a standpoint hisstature would still appear heroic. 'here would still be a great deal to besaid about the man who tried to end the +rusades by talking to theSaracens or who interceded with the Emporer for the birds. 'he writer

might describe in a purely historical spirit the whole of the Franciscaninspiration that was felt in the painting of iotto, in the poetry of -ante,in the miracle plays that made possible the modern drama, and in somany things that are already appreciated by the modern culture. !emay try to do it, as others hae done, almost without raising anyreligious #uestion at all. *n short, he may try to tell the story of a saintwithout od; which is like being told to write the life of ansen andforbidden to mention the orth /ole.


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Second, he may go to the opposite e0treme, and decide, as it were, tobe defiantly deotional. !e may make the theological enthusiasm asthoroughly the theme as it was the theme of the first Franciscans. !emay treat religion as the real thing that it was to the real Francis ofAssisi. !e can find an austere )oy, so to speak, in parading the

parado0es of asceticism and all the topsy1tureydom of humility. !e canstamp the whole history with the Stigmata, record fasts like fightsagainst a dragon; till in the ague modern mind St Francis is as dark afigure as St. -ominic. *n short, he can produce what many in our worldwill regard as a sort of photographic negatie; the reersal of all lightsand shades; what the foolish will find as impenetrable as darkness andeen many of the wise will find almost as inisible as if it were written insiler upon white. Such a study of St. Francis would be unintelligible toanyone who does not share his religion, perhaps only partly intelligibleto anyone who does not share his ocation. According to degrees of)udgement, it will be regarded as something too bad or too good for the

world. 'he only difficulty about doing the thing in this way is that itcannot be done. *t would really re#uire a saint to write about the life of asaint. *n the present case the ob)ections to such a course areinsuperable.'hird, he may try to do what * hae tried to do here; and as * haealready suggested, the course has peculiar problems of its own. 'hewriter may put himself in the position of the ordinary modern outsiderand en#uirer; as indeed the present writer is still largely and was onceentirely in that position. !e may start from the standpoint of a man whoalready admires St. Francis, but only for those things which such a manfinds admirable. *n other words he may assume that the reader is at

least as enlightened as (enan or 2atthew Arnold; but in the light of thatenlightenment he may try to illimunate what (enan and 2atthew Arnoldleft dark. !e may try to use what is understood to e0plain what is notunderstood. !e may try to say to the modern English reader3 4!ere is anhistorical character which is admittedly attractie to many of us already,by its gaiety, its romantic imagination, its spiritual courtesy andcameraderie, but which also contains elements $eidently e#uallysincere and emphatic% which seem to you #uite remote and repulsie.But after all, this man was a man and not half a dozen men. &hat seemsinconsistency to you did not seem inconsistency to him. 5et us seewhether we can understand, with the help of the e0isting understanding,

these other things that now seem to be doubly dark, by their intrinsicgloom and their ironic contrast.4 * do not mean, of course, that * canreally reach a psychological completeness in this crude and curt outline.But * mean that this is the only controersial condition that * shall hereassume; that * am dealing with the sympathetic outsider. * shall notassume any more or any less agreement than this. A materialist may notcare whether the inconsistencies are reconciled or not. A +atholic maynot see any inconsistencies to reconcile. But * am here addressing the


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ordinary common man, sympathetic but sceptical, and * can only ratherhazily hope that, by approaching the great saint"s story through what iseidently pictures#ue and popular about it, * may at least leae thereader understanding a little more than he did before of the consistencyof 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 caern, of why the saint who was so gentlewith his Brother the &olf was so harsh to his Brother the Ass $as henicknamed his own body%, of why the troubadour who said that loe sethis heart on fire separated himself from women, of why the singer whore)oiced in the strength and gaiety of the fire deliberately rolled himselfin the snow, of why the ery song which cries with all the passion of apagan, 4/raised be od for our Sister, 2other Earth, which brings fortharied fruits and grass and glowing flowers,4 ends almost with the words4/raised be od for our Sister, the death of the body.4(enan and 2atthew Arnold failed utterly at this test. 'hey were content

to follow Francis with their praises until they were stopped by theirpre)udices; the stubborn pre)udices of the sceptic. 'he moment Francisbegan to do something they did not understand or did not like, they didnot try to understand, still less to like it; they simply turned their backson the whole business and 4walked no more with him.4 o man will getany further along a path of historical en#uiry in that fashion. 'heseskeptics are really drien to drop the whole sub)ect in despair, to leaethe most simple and sincere of all historical characters as a mass ofcontradiction, to be praised on the principle of the curate"s egg. Arnoldrefers to the asceticism of Alerno almost hurriedly, as if it were anunlucky but undeniable blot on the beauty of the story; or rather as if it

were a pitiable break1down and bathos at the end of story. ow this issimply to be stone1blind to the whole point of any story. 'o represent2ount Alerno as the mere collapse of Francis is e0actly likerepresenting 2ount +alary as the mere collapse of +hrist. 'hosemountains are mountains, whateer else they are, and it is nonsense tosay $like the (ed 6ueen% that they are comparitie hollows or negatieholes in the ground. 'hey were #uite manifestly meant to beculminations and landmarks. 'o treat the Stigmata as a sort of scandal,to be touched on tenderly but with pain, is e0actly like treating theoriginal fie wounds of 7esus +hrist as fie blots on his character. 8oumay dislike the idea of asceticism; you may dislike e#ually the idea of

martyrdom; for that matter you may hae an honest and natural dislikeof the whole conception of sacrifice symbolised by the cross. But if it isan intelligent dislike, you will retain the capacity for seeing the point ofthe story; the story of a martyr or een the story of a monk. 8ou will notbe able rationally to read the ospel and regard the +rucifi0ion as anafterthought or an anti1clima0 or an accident in the life of +hrist; it isobiously the point of the story like the point of a sword, the sword thatpierced the heart of the 2other of od.


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And you will not be able rationally to read the story of a man presentedas a 2irror of +hrist without understanding his final phase as a 2an ofSorrows, and at least artistically appreciating the appropriatness of hisreceiing, in a cloud of mystery and isolation, inflicted by no humanhand, the unhealed eerlasting wounds that heal the world.

'he practical reconciliation of the gaiety and austerity * must leae thestory itself to suggest. But since * hae mentioned 2atthew Arnold and(enan and the rationalistic admirers of St. Francis, * will here gie a hintof what it seems to me most adisable for such readers to keep in mind.'hese distinguished writers found things like the Stigmata a stumblingblock because to them a religion was a philosophy. *t was an impersonalthing; and it is only the most personal passion that proides here anappro0imate earthly parallel. A man will not roll in the snow for a streamof tendency by which all things fulfil the law of their being. !e will not gowithout food in the name of something, not ourseles, that makes forrighteousness. !e will do things like this, or pretty like this, under #uite a

different impulse. !e will do these things when he is in loe. 'he firstfact to realise about St Francis is inoled with the first fact with whichhis story starts; that when he said from the first that he was a'roubadour, and said later that he was a 'roubadour of a newer andnobler romance, he was not using a mere metaphor, but understoodhimself much better than the scholars understand him. !e was, to thelast agonies of asceticism, a 'roubadour. !e was a 5oer. !e was a loerof od and he was really and truly a loer of men; possibly a much rarermystical ocation. A loer of men is ery nearly the opposite of aphilanthropist; indeed the pedantry of the reek word carries somethinglike a satire on itself. A philanthropist may be said to loe anthropoids.

But as St. Francis did not loe humanity but men, so he did not loe+hristianity but +hrist. Say, if you think so, that he was a lunatic loingan imaginary person; but an imaginary person, not an imaginary idea.And for the modern reader the clue to the asceticism and all the rest canbe found in the stories of loers when they seemed to be rather likelunatics. 'ell it as the tale of one of the 'roubadours, and the wild thingshe would do for his lady, and the whole of the modern puzzle disappears.*n such a romance there would be no contradiction between the poetgathering flowers in the sun and enduring a freezing igil in the snow,between his praising all earthly and bodily beauty and then refusing toeat, and between his glorifying gold and purple and perersely going in

rags, between his showing pathetically a hunger for a happy life and athirst for a heroic death. All these riddles would be easily be resoled inthe simplicity of any noble loe; only this was so noble a loe that nineout of ten men hae hardly een heard of it. &e shall see later that thisparallel of the earthly loer has a ery practical relation to the problemsof his life, as to his relations with his father and his friends and theirfamilies. 'he modern reader will almost always find that if he could onlyfind this kind of loe as a reality, he could feel this kind of e0traagance


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as a romance. But * only note it here as a preliminary point because,though it is ery far from being the final truth in the matter, it is the bestapproach to it. 'he reader cannot een begin to see the sense of a storythat may well seem to him a ery wild one, until he understands that tothis great mystic his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like

a loe affair. And the only purpose of this prefatory chapter is to e0plainthe limits of the present book; which is only addressed to that part of themodern world which finds in St. Francis a certain modern difficulty;which can admire him yet hardly accept him, or which can appreciatethe saint almost without the sanctity. And my only claim een to attemptsuch a task is that * myself hae for so long been in arious stages ofsuch a condition. 2any thousand things that * now partly comprehend *should hae thought utterly incomprehensible, many things * now holdsacred * should hae scouted as utterly superstitious, many things thatseem to me lucid and enlightened now they are seen from the inside *should honestly hae called dark and barbarous seen from the outside,

when long ago in those days of boyhood my fancy first caught fire withthe glory of Francis of Assisi. * too hae lied in Arcady; but een inArcady * met one walking in a brown habit who loed the woods betterthan /an. 'he figure in the brown habit stands aboe the hearth in theroom where * write, and alone among many such images, at no stage ofmy pilgrimage has he eer seemed to me a stranger. 'here is somethingof a harmony between the hearth and the firelight and my own firstpleasure in his words about the brother fire; for he stands far enoughback in my memory to mingle with all those more domestic dreams ofthe first days. Een the fantastic shadows thrown by fire make a sort ofshadow pantomine that belongs to the nursery; yet the shadows were

een then the shadows of his faourite beast and birds, as he saw them,grotes#ue but haloed with the loe of od. !is Brother &olf and BrotherSheep seemed then almost like the Brer Fo0 and Brer (abbit of a more+hristian 9ncle (emus. * hae come slowly to see many moremarellous aspects of such a man, but * hae neer lost that one. !isfigure stands on a sort of bridge connecting my boyhood with myconersion to many other things; for the romance of his religion haspenetrated een the rationalism of that ague :ictorian time. *n so far as* hae had this e0perience, * may be able to lead others a little furtheralong that road; but only a ery little further. obody knows better than *do now that it is a road upon which angels might fear to tread; but

though * am certain of failure * am not altogether oercome by fear; forhe suffered fools gladly.

CHAPTER II

THE WORLD ST. FRANCIS FOUND


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'he modern innoation which has substituted )ournalism for history, orfor that tradition that is the gossip of history, has had at least onedefinite effect. *t has insured that eerybody should only hear the end ofeery story. 7ournalists are in the habit of printing aboe the ery lastchapters of their serial stories $when the hero and the heroine are )ust

about to embrace in the last chapter, as only an unfathomableperersity preented them from doing so in the first% the rathermisleading words, 48ou can only begin this story here.4 But een this isnot a complete parallel; for the )ournals do gie some sort of a summaryof the story, while they neer gie anything remotely resembling asummary of the history. ewspapers not only deal with news, but theydeal with eerything as if it were entirely new. *t is e0actly in the samefashion that we read that Admiral Bangs has been shot, which is the firstintimation we hae that he has eer been born.'here is something singularly significant in the use which )ournalismmakes of its stores of biography. *t neer thinks of publishing the life

until it is publishing the death. As it deals with indiiduals it deals withinstitutions and ideas. After the reat &ar our public began to be told ofall sorts of nations being emancipated. *t had neer been told a wordabout their being enslaed. &e were called upon to )udge of the )usticeof settlements, when we had neer been allowed to hear of the erye0istence of the #uarrels. /eople would think it pedantic to talk aboutthe Serbian epics and they prefer to talk about the 8ugo1Slaonicinternational new diplomacy; and they are #uite e0cited aboutsomething they call +zecho1Sloakia without apparently haing eerheard about Bohemia. 'hings that are as old as Europe are regarded asmore recent than the ery latest claims pegged out on the prairies of

America. *t is ery e0citing; like the last act of a play to people who haeonly come into the theatre )ust before the curtain falls. But it does notconduce e0actly to knowing what it is all about. 'o those content withthe mere fact of a pistol1shot or a passionate embrace, such a leisurelymanner of patronising the drama may be recommended. 'o thosetormented by a mere intellectual curiosity about who is kissing or killingwhom, it is unsatisfactory.2ost modern history, especially in England, suffers from the sameimperfection as )ournalism. At best it only tells half the story of+hristendom; and that the second half without the first half. 2en forwhom reason begins with the (eformation, can neer gie a complete

account of anything, for they hae to start with institutions whose originthey can neer e0plain, or generally een imagine. 7ust as we hear of theadmiral being shot but hae neer heard of his being born, so we allheard a great deal about the dissolution of the monasteries, but weheard ne0t to nothing about the creation of the monasteries. ow thissort of history would be hopelessly insufficient, een for an intelligentman who hated the monasteries. *t is hopelessly insufficient inconnection with institutions that many intelligent men do in a #uite


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healthy spirit hate. For instance, it is possible that some of us haeoccasionally seen some mention, by our learned leader1writers, of anobscure institution called the Spanish *n#uisition. &ell, it really is anobscure institution, according to them and the histories they read. *t isobscure because its origin is obscure. /rotestant history simply begins

with the horrible thing in possession, as the pantomine begins with thedemon king in the goblin kitchen. *t is likely enough that it was,especially towards the end, a horrible thing that might be haunted bydemons; but if we say this was so, we hae no notion why it was so. 'ounderstand the Spanish *n#uisition it would be necessary to discoer twothings that we hae neer dreamed of bothering about; what Spain wasand what an *n#uisition was. 'he former would bring in the whole great#uestion about the +rusade against the 2oors; and by what heroicchialry a European nation freed itself of an alien domination fromAfrica. 'he latter would bring in the whole business of the other +rusadeagainst the Albigensians, and why men loed and hated that nihilistic

ision from Asia. 9nless we understand that there was in these thingsoriginally the rush and romance of a +rusade, we cannot understandhow they came to deceie men or drag them on towards eil. 'he+rusaders doubtless abused their ictory, but there was a ictory toabuse. And where there is ictory there is alour in the field andpopularity in the forum. 'here is some sort of enthusiasm thatencourages e0cesses or coers faults. For instance, * for one haemaintained from ery early days the responsibility of the English fortheir atrocious treatment of the *rish. But it would be #uite unfair todescribe een the deilry of "< and leae out altogether all mention ofthe war with apoleon. *t would be un)ust to suggest that the English

mind was bent on nothing but the death of Emmett, when it was moreprobably full of the glory of the death of elson. 9nfortunately "< wasery far from being the last date of such dirty work; and only a few yearsago our politicians started trying to rule by random robbing and killing,while gently remonstrating with the *rish for their memory of oldunhappy far1off things and battles long ago. But howeer badly we maythink of the Black1and tan business, it would be un)ust to forget thatmost of us were not thinking of Black1and1'an but of khaki; and thatkhaki had )ust then a noble and national connotation coering manythings. 'o write of the war with *reland and leae out the war against/russia, and the English sincerity about it, would be un)ust to the

English. So to talk about the torture1engine as if it had been a hideoustoy is un)ust to the Spanish. *t does not tell sensibly from the start thestory of what the Spaniards did, and why. &e may concede to ourcontempories that in any case it is not a story that ends well. &e do notinsist that in their ersion it should begin well. &hat we complain of isthat in their ersion it does not begin at all. 'hey are only in at thedeath; or een, like 5ord 'om oddy, to late for the hanging. *t is #uite


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true that it was more horrible than any hanging; but they only gather, soto speak, the ery ashes of the ashes; the fag1end of the faggot.'he case of the *n#uisition is here taken at random, for it is one amongany number illustrating the same thing; and not because it is especiallyconnected with St. Francis, in whateer sense it may hae been

connected with St -ominic. *t may well be suggested later indeed thatSt. Francis is unintelligible, )ust as St. -ominic is unintelligible, unless wedo understand something of what the thirteenth century meant byheresy and a crusade. But for the moment * use it as a lesser e0amplefor a much larger purpose. *t 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 ofthe story, or rather not to tell the story at all. And it is to suggest thatthe modern tail1foremost type of )ournalistic history perpetually fails us.&e learn about reformers without knowing what they had to reform,about rebels without knowing what they rebelled against, of memorialsthat are not connected with any memory and restorations of things that

apparently neer e0isted before. Een at the e0pense of this chapterappearing disproportionate, it is necessary to say something about thegreat moements that led up to the entrance of the founder of theFranciscans. *t may seem to mean describing a world, or een a unierseto describe a man. *t will ineitably mean that the world or the uniersewill be described with a few desperate generalisations in a few abruptsentences. But so far from its meaning that we shall see a ery smallfigure under so large a sky, it will mean that we must measure the skybefore we can begin to measure the towering stature of the man.And this phrase alone brings me to the preliminary suggestions thatseem necessary before een a slight sketch of the life of St. Francis. *t is

necessary to realise, in howeer rude and elementary a fashion, intowhat sort of a world St. Francis entered and what had been the history ofthat world, at least in so far as it affected him. *t is necessary to hae, ifonly in a few sentences, a sort of preface in the form of an =utline of!istory, if we may borrow the phrase of 2r. &ells. in the case of 2r.&ells himself, it is eident that the distinguished noelist suffered thesame disadantage as if he had been obliged to write a noel of whichhe hated the hero. 'o write history and hate (ome, both pagan andpapal, is to hate eerything that has happened. *t comes ery nearly tohating humanity on purely humanitarian grounds. 'o dislike both thepriest and the soldier, both the laurels of the warrior and the lilies of the

saint, is to suffer a diision from the mass of mankind for which not allthe de0terities of the finest and most fle0ible of modern intelligencescan compensate. A much wider sympathy is needed for the historicalsetting of St. Francis, himself both a soldier and a saint. * will thereforeconclude this chapter with a few generalisations about the world St.Francis found.2en will not beliee because they will not broaden their minds. As amatter of indiidual belief, * should of course e0press it by saying they


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are not sufficiently catholic to be +atholic. But * am not going to discusshere the doctrinal truths of +hristianity, but simply the broad historicalfact of +hristianity, as it might appear to a really enlightened andimaginatie person een if he were not a +hristian. &hat * mean at themoment is that the ma)ority of doubts are made out of details. *n the

course of random reading a man comes across a pagan custom thatstrikes him as pictures#ue or a +hristian action that strikes him as cruel;but he does not enlarge his mind sufficiently to see the main truth aboutpagan custom or the +hristian reaction against it. 9ntil we understand,not necessarily in detail, but in their big bulk and proportion that paganprogress and that +hristian reaction, we cannot really understand thepoint of history at which St. Francis appears or what his great popularmission was all about.ow eerybody knows, * imagine, that the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies were an awakening of the world. 'hey were a fresh floweringof culture and the creatie arts after a long spell of much sterner and

een more sterile e0perience which we call the -ark Ages. 'hey may becalled an emancipation; they were certainly an end; an end of what mayat least seem a harsher and more inhuman time. But what was it thatwas ended> From what was it that men were emancipated> 'hat iswhere there is a real collision and point at issue between the differentphilosophies of history. =n the merely e0ternal and secular side, it hasbeen truly said that men awoke from a sleep; but there had beendreams in that sleep of a mystical and sometimes of a monstrous kind.*n that rationalistic routine into which most modern historians haefallen, it is considered enough to say that they were emancipated frommere saage superstition and adanced towards mere ciilised

enlightenment. ow this is the big blunder that stands as a stumbling1block at the ery beginning of our story. Anybody who supposes that the-ark Ages were plain darkness and nothing else, and that the dawn ofthe thirteenth century was plain daylight and nothing else, will not beable to make head or tail of the human story of St. Francis of Assisi. 'hetruth is that the )oy of St. Francis and his 7ongleurs de -ieu was notmerely an awakening. *t was something which cannot be understoodwithout understanding their own mystical creed. 'he end of the -arkAges was not merely the end of a sleep. *t was certainly not merely theend of a superstitious enslaement. *t was the end of somethingbelonging to a #uite definite but #uite different order of ideas.

*t was the end of a penance; or, if it be preferred, a purgation. *t markedthe moment when a certain spiritual e0piation had been finally workedout and certain spiritual diseases had been finally e0pelled from thesystem. 'hey had been e0pelled by an era of asceticism, which was theonly thing that could hae e0pelled them. +hristianity had entered theworld to cure the world; and she cured it in the only way in which itcould be cured. :iewed merely in an e0ternal and e0perimental fashion,the whole of the high ciilisation of anti#uity had ended in the learning


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of a certain lesson; that is, in its conersion to +hristianity. But thatlesson was a psychological fact as well as a theological faith. 'hat paganciilization had indeed been a ery high ciilisation. *t would not weakenour thesis, it might een strengthen it, to say that it was the highest thathumanity eer reached. *t had discoered its still unrialled arts of

poetry and plastic representation; it had discoered its own permanentpolitical ideals; it had discoered its own clear system of logic andlanguage. But aboe all, it had discoered its own mistake. 'hat mistakewas too deep to be ideally defined; the short1hand of it is to call it themistake of nature1worship. *t might almost as truly be called the mistakeof being natural; and it was a ery natural mistake. 'he reeks, thegreat guides and pioneers of pagan anti#uity, started out with the ideaof something splendidly obious and direct; the idea that if a manwalked straight ahead on the high road of reason and nature, he wouldcome to no harm; especially if he was, as the reek was, eminentlyenlightened and intelligent. &e might be so flippant as to say that man

was simply to follow his nose, so long as it was a reek nose. And thecase of the reeks themseles is alone enough to illustrate the strangebut certain fatality that attends upon this fallacy. o sooner did thereeks themseles begin to follow their own noses and their own notionof being natural, than the #ueerest thing in history seems to haehappened to them. *t was much too #ueer to be an easy matter todiscuss. *t may be remarked that our more repulsie realists neer gieus the benefit of their realism. 'heir studies of unsaoury sub)ects neertake 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 suchthings as part of the case for +hristian morals. And an instance of this is

found in the fact that nobody has written, in this sense, a real moralhistory of the reeks. obody has seen the scale or the strangeness ofthe story. 'he wisest men in the world set out to be natural; and themost unnatural thing in the world was the ery first thing they did. 'heimmediate effect of saluting the sun and the sunny sanity of nature wasa perersion spreading like a pestilence. 'he greatest and een thepurest philosophers could not apparently aoid this low sort of lunacy.&hy> *t would seem simple enough for the people whose poets hadconceied !elen of 'roy, whose sculptors had cared the :enus of 2ilo,to remain healthy on the point. 'he truth is people who worship healthcannot remain healthy on the point. &hen 2an goes straight he goes

crooked. &hen he follows his nose he manages somehow to put his noseout of )oint, or een to cut off his nose to spite his face; and that inaccordance with something much deeper in human nature than nature1worshippers could eer understand. *t was the discoery of that deeperthing, humanly speaking, that constituted the conersion to +hristianity.'here is a bias in a man like the bias on a bowl; and +hristianity was thediscoery of how to correct the bias and therefore hit the mark. 'hereare many who will smile at the saying; but it is profoundly true to say


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that the glad good news brought by the ospel was the news of originalsin.(ome rose at the e0pense of her reek teachers largely because she didnot entirely consent to be taught these tricks. She had a much moredecent tradition; but she ultimately suffered from the same fallacy in her

religious tradition; which was necessarily in no small degree the heathentradition of nature worship. &hat was the matter with the whole heathenciilisation was that there nothing for the mass of men in the way ofmysticism, e0cept that concerned with the mystery of the namelessforces of nature, such as se0 and growth and death. *n the (omanEmpire also, long before the end, we find nature1worship ineitablyproducing things that are against nature. +ases like that of ero haepassed into a proerb when Sadism sat on a throne brazen in the broaddaylight. But the truth * mean is something much more subtle anduniersal than a conentional catalogue of atrocities. &hat hadhappened to the human imagination, as a whole, was that the whole

world was coloured by dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions; bynatural passions becoming unnatural passions. 'hus the effect oftreating se0 as only one innocent natural thing was that eery otherinnocent natural thing became soaked and sodden with se0. For se0cannot be admitted to a mere e#uality among elementary emotions ore0periences like eating and sleeping. 'he moment se0 ceases to be aserant it becomes a tyrant. 'here is something dangerous anddisproportionate in its place in human nature, for whateer reason; andit does really need a special purification and dedication. 'he modern talkabout se0 being free like any other sense, about the body beingbeautiful like any tree or flower, is either a description of the arden of

Eden or a piece of thoroughly bad psychology, of which the world grewweary two thousand years ago.'his is not to be confused with mere self1righteous sensationalism aboutthe wickedness of the pagan world. *t was not so much that the paganworld was wicked as that it was good enough to realise that its paganismwas becoming wicked, or rather it was on the logical high road towickedness. * mean that there was no future for 4natural magic4; todeepen it was only to darken it into black magic. 'here was no future forit; because in the past it had only been innocent because it was young.&e might say it had only been innocent because it was shallow. /aganswere wiser that paganism; that is why the pagans became +hristians.

'housands of them had philosophy and family irtues and militaryhonour to hold them up; but by this time the purely popular thing calledreligion was certainly dragging them down. &hen this reaction againstthe eil is allowed for, it is true to repeat that it was an eil that waseerywhere. *n another and more literal sense its name was /an.*t was no metaphor to say that these people needed a new heaen and anew earth; for they had really defiled their own earth and een their ownheaen. !ow could their case be met by looking at the sky, when erotic


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legends were scrawled in stars across it; how could they learn anythingfrom the loe of birds and flowers after the sort of loe stories that weretold of them> *t is impossible here to multiply eidences, and one smalle0ample may stand for the rest. &e know what sort of sentimentalassociations are called up to us by the phrase 4a garden4; and how we

think mostly of the memory of melancholy and innocent romances, or#uite as often of some gracious maiden lady or kindly old personpottering under a yew hedge, perhaps in sight of a illage spire. 'hen,let anyone who knows a little 5atin poetry recall suddenly what wouldhae once stood in place of the sun1dial or the fountain, obscene andmonstrous in the sun; and of what sort was the god of their gardens.othing could purge this obsession but a religion that was literallyunearthly. *t was no good telling such people to hae a natural religionfull of stars and flowers; there was not a flower or een a star that hadnot been stained. 'hey had to go into the desert where they could findno flowers or een into the caern where they could see no stars. *nto

that desert and that caern the highest human intellect entered forsome four centuries; and it was the ery wisest thing it could do. othingbut the stark supernatural stood up for its salation; if od could notsae it, certainly the gods could not. 'he early +hurch called the gods ofpaganism deils; and the Early +hurch was perfectly right. &hateernatural religion may hae had to do with their beginnings, nothing butfiends now inhabited those hollow shrines. /an was nothing but panic.:enus was nothing but enereal ice. * do not mean for a moment, ofcourse, that all the indiidual pagans were of this character een to theend; but it was as indiiduals that they differed from it. othingdistinguishes paganism from +hristianity so clearly as the fact that the

indiidual thing called philosophy had little or nothing to do with thesocial thing called religion. Anyhow it was no good to preach naturalreligion to people to whom nature had grown as unnatural as anyreligion. 'hey knew much better than we do what was the matter withthem and what sort of demons at once tempted and tormented them;and they wrote across that great space of history the te0t; 4'his sortgoeth not out but by prayer and fasting.4ow the historical importance of St. Francis and the transition from thetwelfth to the thirteenth centuries, lies in the fact that they marked theend of this e0piation. 2en at the close of the dark Ages may hae beenrude and unlettered and unlearned in eerything but wars with heathen

tribes, more barbarous than themseles, but they were clean. 'hey werelike children; the first beginnings of their rude arts hae all the cleanpleasure of children. &e hae to conceie them in Europe as a wholeliing under little local goernments, feudal in so far as they were asurial of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and carrying afar more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial as far as(ome still ruled as a great legend. But in *taly something had suriedmore typical of the finer spirit of anti#uity; the republic, *taly, was dotted


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with little states, largely democratic in their ideals, and often filled withreal citizens. But the city no longer lay open as under the (oman peace,but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war and all thecitizens had to be soldiers. =ne of these stood in a steep and strikingposition on the wooded hills of 9mbria; and its name was Assisi. =ut of

its deep gate under its high turrets was to come the message that wasthe gospel of the hour, 48our warfare is accomplished, your ini#uity ispardoned.4 But it was out of all these fragmentary things of feudalismand freedom and remains of (oman 5aw that there were to rise, at thebeginning of the thirteenth century, ast and almost uniersal, themighty ciilisation of the 2iddle Ages.*t is an e0aggeration to attribute it entirely to the inspiration of any oneman, een the most original genius of the thirteenth century. *tselementary ethics of fraternity and fair play had neer been entirelye0tinct and +hristendom had neer been anything less than +hristian.'he great truisms about )ustice and pity can be found in the rudest

monastic records of the barbaric transition or the stiffest ma0ims of theByzantine decline. And early in the eleenth and twelfth centuries alarger moral moement had clearly begun, but what may fairly be saidof it is this, that oer all those first moements there was still somethingof that ancient austerity that came from the long penitentiary period. *twas the twilight of the morning; but it was still a grey twilight. 'his maybe illustrated by the mere mention of two or three of these reformsbefore the Franciscan reform. 'he monastic institution itself, of course,was far older than all these things; indeed it was undoubtedly almost asold as +hristianity. *ts counsels of perfection had always taken the formof ows of chastity and poerty and obedience. &ith these unworldly

aims it had long ago ciilised a great part of the world. 'he monks hadtaught people to plough and sow as well as to read and write; indeedthey had taught the people nearly eerything the people knew. But itmay truly be said that the monks were seerely practical, in the sensethat they not only practical but also seere; though they were generallyseere with themseles and practical for other people. All this earlymonastic moement had long ago settled down and doubtless oftendeteriorated; but when we come to the first medieal moements thissterner character is still apparent. 'hree e0amples may be taken toillustrate the point.First, the ancient social mould of slaery was already beginning to melt.

ot only was the slae turning into a serf, who was practically free asregards his own farm and family life, but many lords were freeing slaesand serfs altogether. 'his was done under the pressure of the priests;but especially it was done in the spirit of a penance. *n one sense, ofcourse, any +atholic society must hae an atmosphere of penance; but *am speaking of that sterner spirit of penance which had e0piated thee0cesses of paganism. 'here was about such restitutions theatmosphere of the death1bed; as many of them were doubtless were


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e0amples of death1bed repentance. A ery honest atheist with whom *once debated made use of the e0pression, 42en hae only been kept inslaery by the fear of hell.4 As * pointed out to him, if he had said thatmen had only been freed from slaery by the fear of hell, he would haeat least hae been referring to an un#uestionable historical fact.

Another e0ample was the sweeping reform of +hurch discipline by /operegory the Seenth. *t really was a reform, undertaken from the highestmoties and haing the healthiest results; it conducted a searchingin#uisition against simony or the financial corruption of the clergy; itinsisted on a more serious and self1sacrificing ideal for the life of theparish priest. But the ery fact that this largely took the form of makinguniersal the obligation of celibacy will strike the note of somethingwhich, howeer noble, would seem to many to be aguely negatie. 'hethird e0ample is in one sense the strongest of all. For the third e0amplewas a war; a heroic war and for many of us a holy war; but still haing allthe stark and terrible responsibilities of war. 'here is no space here to

say all that should be said about the true nature of the +rusades.Eerybody knows that in the ery darkest hour of the -ark Ages a sort ofheresy had sprung up in Arabia and become a new religion of a militarybut nomadic sort; inoking the name of 2ahomet. *ntrinsically it had acharacter found in many heresies from the 2oslem to the 2onist. *tseemed to the heretic a sane simplification of religion; while it seems toa +atholic an insane simplification of religion, because it simplifies all toa single idea and so loses the breadth and balance of +atholicism.Anyhow its ob)ectie character was that of a military danger to+hristendom and +hristendom had struck at the ery heart of it, inseeking to recon#uer the !oly /laces. 'he great -uke odfrey and the

first +hristians who stormed 7erusalem were heroes if there were any inthe world; but they were the heroes of a tragedy.ow * hae taken these two or three e0amples of the earlier mediealmoements in order to note about them one general character, whichrefers back to the penance that followed paganism. 'here is somethingin all these moements that is bracing een while it is still bleak, like awind blowing between the clefts of the mountains. 'hat wind, austereand pure, of which the poet speaks, is really the spirit of the time, for itis the wind of a world that has at last been purified. 'o anyone who canappreciate atmospheres there is something clear and clean about theatmosphere of this crude and often harsh society. *ts ery lusts are

clean; for they no hae longer any smell of perersion. *ts ery crueltiesare clean; they are not the lu0urious cruelties of the amphitheatre. 'heycome either of a ery simple horror at blasphemy or a ery simple furyat an insult. radually against this grey background beauty begins toappear, as something really fresh and delicate and aboe all surprising.5oe returning is no longer what was once called platonic but what isstill called chialric loe. 'he flowers and stars are hae recoered their


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first innocence. Fire and water are felt to be worthy to be the brotherand sister of a saint. 'he purge of paganism is complete at last.For water itself has been washed. Fire itself has been purified as by fire.&ater is no longer the water into which slaes were flung to feed thefishes. Fire is no longer that fire through which children were passed to

2oloch. Flowers smell no more of the forgotten garlands gathered in thegarden of /riapus; stars stand no more as signs of the far frigidity ofgods as cold as those cold fires. 'hey are like all new things newly madeand awaiting new names, from one who shall come to name them.either the unierse nor the earth hae now any longer the old sinistersignificance of the world. 'hey await a new reconciliation with man, butthey are already capable of being reconciled. 2an has stripped from hissoul the last rag of nature worship, and can return to nature.&hile it was yet twilight a figure appeared silently and suddenly on alittle hill aboe the city, dark against the fading darkness. For it was theend of a long and stern night, a night of igil, not unisited by stars. !e

stood with his hands lifted, as in so many statues and pictures, andabout him was a burst of birds singing; and behind him was the break ofday.

CHAPTER III

FRANCIS THE FIGHTER

According to one tale, which if not true would be none the less typical,the ery name of St. Francis was not so much a name as a nickname.'here would be something akin to his familiar and popular instinct in thenotion that he was nicknamed ery much as an ordinary schoolboymight be called 4Frenchy4 at school. According to this ersion his namewas not Francis at all but 7ohn; and his companions called him4Francesco4, or 4'he little Frenchman4 because of his passion for theFrench poetry of the 'roubadours. 'he more probable story is that hismother had him named 7ohn when he was born in the absence of hisfather, who shortly returned from a isit to France, &here hiscommercial success had filled him with so much enthusiasm for Frenchtaste and social usage that he gae his son the new name signifying theFrank or Frenchman. *n either case the name had a certain significance,as connecting Francis from the first with what he himself regarded asthe romantic fairy land of the 'roubadours.'he name of the father was /ietro Bernadone and he was a substantialcitizen of the guild of the cloth merchants in the town of Assisi. *t is hardto describe the position of such a man without some appreciation ofsuch a guild and een of such a town. *t did not e0actly correspond toanything that is meant in modern times either by a merchant or a manof business or a tradesman, or anything that e0ists under the conditions


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of capitalism. Bernadone may hae employed people but he was not anemployer; that is; he did not belong to an employing class as distinctfrom an employed class. 'he person we definitely hear of his employingis his son Francis; who, one is tempted to guess, was about the lastperson that any man of business would employ if it were conenient to

employ anybody else. !e was rich, as a peasant may be rich by the workof his own family; but he eidently e0pected his own family to work in away almost as plain as a peasant"s. !e was a prominent citizen, but hebelonged to a social order which e0isted to preent him being tooprominent to be a citizen. *t kept all such people on their own simpleleel, and no prosperity connoted that escape from drudgery by which inmodern times the lad might hae seemed to be a lord or a finegentleman or something other than the cloth merchant"s son. 'his is arule that is proed een in the e0ception. Francis was one of thosepeople who are popular with eerybody in any case; and his guilessswagger as a 'roubadour and leader of French fashions made him a sort

of romantic ringleader among the young men of the town. !e threwmoney about both in e0traagance and beneolence, in a way natie toa man who neer, all his life, e0actly understood what money was. 'hismoed his mother to mingled e0ultation and e0asperation and she said,as any tradesman"s wife might say anywhere3 4!e is more like a princethan our son.4 But one of the earliest glimpses we hae of him showshim as simply selling bales of cloth from a booth in the market; which hismother may or may not hae belieed to be one of the habits of princes.'his first glimpse of the young man in the market is symbolic in moreways than one. An incident occurred which is perhaps the shortest andsharpest summary that could be gien of certain curious things which

were a part of his character, long before it was transfigured bytranscendental faith. &hile he was selling elet and fine embroideriesto some solid merchant of the town a beggar came imploring alms;eidently in a somewhat tactless manner. *t was a rude and simplesociety and there were no laws to punish a staring man for e0pressinghis need for food, such as hae been established in a more humanitarianage; and the lack of any organised police permitted such persons topester the wealthy without any great danger. But there was * beliee, inmany places a local custom of the guild forbidding outsiders to interrupta fair bargain; and it is possible that some such thing put the mendicantmore than normally in the wrong. Francis had all his life a great liking for

people who had been put hopelessly in the wrong. =n this occasion heseems to hae dealt with the double interiew with rather a diidedmind; certainly with distraction, possibly with irritation. /erhaps he wasall the more uneasy because of the almost fastidious standard ofmanners that came to him #uite naturally. All are agreed that politenessflowed from him from the first, like one of the public fountains in such asunny *talian market place. !e might hae written among his own poemsas his own motto that erse of 2r. Belloc"s poem11


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4=f +ourtesy, it is much less 'han courage of heart or holiness 8et in my walks it seems to me 'hat the grace of od is in +ourtesy.4

obody eer doubted that Francis Bernadone had courage of heart,een of the most manly and military sort; and a time was to come whenthere was #uite as little doubt about the holiness and grace of od. But *think that if there was one thing about which he was punctilious, it waspunctiliousness. *f there was one thing of which so humble a man couldbe said to be proud, he was proud of good manners. =nly behind hisperfectly natural urbanity were wider and een wilder possibilities, ofwhich we get the first flash in this triial incident. Anyhow Francis waseidently torn two ways with the botheration of two talkers, but finishedhis 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 elet and embroidery behind him apparently unprotected, andwent racing across the market1place like an arrow from the bow. Stillrunning, he threaded the labrynth of the narrow and crooked streets ofthe little town, looking for his beggar whom he eentually discoered;and loaded the astonished mendicant with money. 'hen he straightenedhimself, so to speak, and swore before od that he would neer all hislife refuse help to a poor man. 'he sweeping simplicity of thisundertaking is e0tremely characteristic. eer was any man so littleafraid of his own promises. !is life was one riot of rash ows; of rashows that turned out right.'he first biographers of Francis, naturally alie with the great religious

reolution that he wrought, e#ually naturally looked back to his firstyears chiefly for omens and signs of such a spiritual earth#uake. Butwriting 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 anye0ternal sign of anything particularly mystical about the young man. !ehad not anything of that early sense of his ocation that has belonged tosome of the saints. =er and aboe his main ambition to win fame as aFrench poet, he would seem to hae most often thought of winning fameas a soldier. !e was born kind; he was brae in the normal boyishfashion; but he drew the line in both in kindness and braery pretty wellwhere most boys would hae drawn it; for instance, he had the human

horror of leprosy of which few normal people felt any need to beashamed. !e had the loe of gay and bright apparel which was inherentin the heraldic taste of medieal times and seems altogether to haebeen rather a festie figure. *f he did not paint the town red, he wouldprobably hae preferred to paint it all the colours of the rainbow, as in amedieal picture. But in this story of the young man in gay garmentsscampering after the anishing beggar in rags there are certain notes ofhis natural indiiduality that must be assumed from first to last.


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For instance, there is the spirit of swiftness. *n a sense he continuedrunning for the rest of his life, as he ran after the beggar. Because nearlyall the errands he ran were errands of mercy, there appeared in hisportraiture a mere element of mildness which was true in the truestsense, but is easily misunderstood. A certain precipitancy was the ery

poise of his soul. 'his saint should be represented among the othersaints as angels were sometimes represented in pictures of angels; withflying feet or with feathers; in the spirit of the te0t that makes angelswinds and messengers a flaming fire. *t is a curiosity of language thatcourage actually means running; and some of our sceptics will no doubtdemonstrate that courage really means running away. But his couragewas running, in the sense of rushing. &ith all his gentleness, there wasoriginally something of impatience in his impetuosity. 'he psychologicaltruth about it illustrates ery well the modern muddle about the word4practical.4 *f we mean by what is practical what is most immediatelypracticable, we merely mean what is easiest. *n that sense St. Francis

was ery impractical, and his ultimate aims were ery unworldly. Bit ifwe mean by practicality a preference for prompt effort and energy oerdoubt or delay, he was ery practical indeed. Some might call him amadman, but he was the ery reerse of a dreamer. obody would belikely to call him a man of business; but he was ery emphatically a manof action. *n some of his early e0periments he was rather too much of aman of action; he acted too soon and was too practical to be prudent.But at eery turn of his e0traordinary career we shall find him flinginghimself around corners in the most une0pected fashion, as when he flewthrough 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 thathad neer perhaps been wholly lost in those little republics of medieal*taly. *t was something ery puzzling to some people; something cleareras a rule to Southerners than to ortheners, and * think to +atholics thanto /rotestants; the #uite natural assumption of the e#uality of men. *thas nothing necessarily to do with the Franciscan loe for men; on thecontrary one of its merely practical tests is the e#uality of the duel./erhaps a gentleman will neer be fully an egalitarian until he can really#uarrel with his serant. But it was an antecedant condition of theFranciscan brotherhood; and we feel it in this early and secular incident.Francis, * fancy, felt a real doubt about which he must attend to, the

beggar or the merchant; and haing attended to the merchant, heturned to attend the beggar; he thought of them as two men. 'his is athing much more difficult to describe, in a society from which it isabsent, but it was the original basis of the whole business; it was whythe popular moement arose in that sort of place and that sort of man.!is imaginatie magnanimity rose like a tower to starry heights thatmight well seem dizzy and een crazy; but it was founded on this hightable land of human e#uality.


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* hae taken this the first among a hundred tales of the youth of St.Francis, and dwelt on its significance a little, because until we haelearned to look for the significance there will often seem to be little but asort of light sentiment in telling the story. St. Francis is not a properperson to be patronised with merely 4pretty4 stories. 'here are often any

number of them; but they are too often used so as to be a sort ofsentimental sediment of the medieal world, instead of being, as thesaint emphatically is, a challenge to the modern world. &e must take hishuman deelopment somewhat more seriously; and the ne0t story inwhich we get a glimpse of it is in a ery different setting. But in e0actlythe same way it opens, as if by accident, certain abysses of the mindand perhaps of the unconscious mind. Francis still looks more or less likean ordinary young man; and it is only when we look at him as anordinary young man, that we realise what an e0traordinary young manhe was.&ar had broken out between Assisi and /erugia. *t is now fashionable to

say in a satirical spirit that such wars did not so much break out as to goon idefinitely between the city states of medieal *taly. *t will be enoughto say here that if one of those medieal wars had really gone onwithout stopping for a century, it might possibly hae come within aremote distance of killing as many people as we kill in a year, in one ofour great modern scientific wars between our great modern industrialempires. But the citizens of the medieal republic were certainly underthe limitation of only being asked to die for the things with which theyhad always lied, the house they inhabited, the shrines they eneratedand the rulers and representaties they new; and had not the largerision calling for them to die for the latest rumours about remote

colonies as reported in anonymous newspapers. And if we infer from ourown e0perience that war paralyzed ciilization, we must at least admitthat these warring towns turned out a number of paralytics who go bythe names of -ante and 2ichael Angelo, Ariosto and 'itian, 5eonardoand +olumbus, not to mention +atherine of Siena and the sub)ect of thisstory. &hile we lament all this local patriotism as a hubbub of the -arkAges, it must seem a rather curious fact that about three #uarters of thegreatest men who eer lied came out of these little towns and wereoften engaged in these little wars. *t remains to be seen what willultimately come out of our large towns; but there has been no sign ofanything of this sort since they became large; and * hae sometimes

been haunted by a fancy of my youth, that these things will not come tillthere is a city wall around +lapham and the tocsin is rung at night toarm the citizens of &imbledon.Anyhow, the tocsin was rung at Assisi and the citizens armed, andamong them was Francis the son of the cloth merchant. !e went out tofight with some company of lancers and in some fight or other he andhis little band were taken prisoners. 'o me it seems most probable thatthere had been some tale of treason or cowardice about the disaster; for


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we are told that there was one of the capties with whom his fellow1prisoners flatly refused to associate een in prison; and when thishappens in such circumstances, it is generally because the militaryblame for the surrender is thrown on some indiidual. Anyhow,somebody noted a small but rather curious thing, though it might seem

rather negatie than positie. Francis, we are told, moed among hiscaptie companions with all his characteristic courtesy and eenconiiality, 4liberal and hilarious4 as somebody said of him, resoled tokeep up their spirits and his own. And when he came across themysterious outcast, traitor or coward or whateer he was called, hesimply treated him e0actly like all the rest, neither with coldness orcompassion, but with the same unaffected gaiety and good fellowship.But if there had been present in that prison someone with a sort ofsecond sight about the truth and trend of spiritual things, he might haeknown he was in the presence of something new and seemingly almostanarchic; a deep tide driing out to uncharted seas of charity. For in this

sense there was really something wanting in Francis of Assisi, somethingto which he was blind that he might see better and more beautifulthings. All those limits in good fellowship and good form, all thoselandmarks of social life that diide the tolerable and the intolerable, allthose social scruples and conentional conditions that are normal andeen noble in ordinary men, all those things that hold many decentsocieties together, could neer hold this man at all. !e liked as he liked;he seems to hae liked eerybody, but especially those whomeerybody disliked him for liking. Something ery ast and uniersal wasalready present in that narrow dungeon; and such a seer might haeseen in its darkness that red halo of caritas caritatum which marks one

saint among saints as well as among men. !e might well hae heard thefirst whisper of that wild blessing that afterwards took the form of ablasphemy; 4!e listens to those whom od himself will not listen4.But though such a seer might hae seen such a truth, it is e0ceedinglydoubtful if Francis himself saw it. !e had acted out of an unconsciouslargeness, or in the fine medieal phrase largesse, within himself,something might almost hae been lawless if it had not been reachingout to a more diine law; but is doubtful whether he new the law wasdiine. *t is eident that he had not at this time any notion of abandoningthe military, still less of adopting the monastic life. *t is true that there isnot, as pacifists and prigs imagine, the least inconsistency between

loing men and fighting them, if we fight them fairly and for a goodcause. But it seems to me that there was more than this inoled; thatthe mind of the young man was really running towards a militarymorality in any case. About this time the first calamity crossed his pathin the form of a malady which was to reisit him many times andhamper his headlong career. Sickness made him more serious; but onefancies it would only hae made him a more serious soldier, or eenmore serious about soldiering. And while he was recoering, something


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rather larger than the little fueds and raids of the *talian towns openedan aenue of adenture and ambition. 'he crown of Sicily, aconsiderable centre of controersy at the time, was apparently claimedby a certain authier de Brienne, and the /apal cause to aid whichauthier was called in aroused enthusiasm among a number of young

Assisians, including Francis, who proposed to march into Apulia on thecount"s behalf; perhaps his French name had something to do with it. Forit must neer be forgotten that though that world was in one sense aworld of little things, it was a world of little things concerned with greatthings. 'here was more internationalism in the lands dotted with tinyrepublics than in the huge homogeneous impenetrable national diisionsof to1day. 'he legal authority of the Assisian magistrates might hardlyreach further than a bow1shot from their high embattled city walls. Buttheir sympathies might be with the ride of the ormans through Sicily orthe palace of the 'roubadours at 'oulouse; with the Emperor throned inthe erman forests or the great /ope dying in the e0ile of Salerno.

Aboe all, it must be remembered that when the interests of an age aremainly religious they must be uniersal. othing can be more uniersalthan the unierse. And there are seeral things about the religiousposition at that particular moment which modern people not unnaturallyfail to realise. For one thing, modern people naturally think of people soremote as ancient people, and een early people. &e feel aguely thatthese things happened in the first ages of the +hurch. 'he +hurch wasalready a good deal more than a thousand years old. 'hat is, the +hurchwas then rather older than France is now, a great deal older thanEngland is now. And she looked old then; almost as old as she does now;possibly older than she does now. 'he +hurch looked like great

+harlemagne with the long white beard, who had already fought ahundred wars with the heathen, and in the legend was bidden by anangel to go forth and fight once more though he was two thousand yearsold. 'he +hurch had topped her thousand years and turned the cornerfor the second thousand; she had come through the -ark Ages in whichnothing could be done e0cept desperate fighting against the barbariansand the stubborn repitition of the creed. 'he creed was still beingrepeated after the ictory or escape; but it is not unnatural to supposethat there was something a little monotonous about the repitition. 'he+hurch looked old then as now; and there were some who thought herdying as now. *n truth orthodo0y was not dead but it may hae been

dull; it is certain that some people began to think it dull. 'he'roubadours of the /roencal moement had already begun to take thatturn or twist towards =riental fancies and the parado0 of pessimism,which always comes to Europeans as something fresh when their ownsanity seems to be something stale. *t is likely enough that after allthose centuries of hopeless war without and ruthless asceticism within,the official orthodo0y seemed to be something stale. 'he freshness andfreedom of the first +hristians seemed then as much as now a lost and


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almost prehistoric age of gold. (ome was still more rational thananything else; the +hurch was really wiser but it may well hae seemedwearier than the world. 'here was something more adenturous andalluring, perhaps, about the mad metaphysics that had been blownacross out of Asia. -reams were gathering like dark clouds oer the 2idi

to break in a thunder of anathema and ciil war. =nly the light lay on thegreat plain around (ome; but the light was blank and the plain was flat;and there was no stir in the still air and the immemorial silence aboutthe sacred town.!igh in the dark house of Assisi Francesco Bernadonne slept anddreamed of arms. 'here came to him in the darkness a ision splendidwith swords, patterned after the cross in the +rusading fashion, ofspears and shields and helmets hung in a high armoury, all bearing thesacred sign. &hen he awoke he accepted the dream as a trumpetbidding him to the battlefield, and rushed out to take horse and arms.!e delighted in all the e0ercises of chialry; and was eidently an

accomplished caalier and fighting man by the tests of the camp. !ewould doubtless at any time hae preferred a +hristian sort of chialry;but it seems clear that he was also in a mood which thirsted for glory,though in him that glory would always hae been identical with honour.!e was not without some ision of that wreath of laurel which +easarhas left for all the 5atins. As he rode out to war the great gate in thedeep wall of Assisi resounded with his last boast, 4* shall come back agreat prince.4A little way along the road his sickness rose again and threw him. *tseems highly probable, in the light of his impetuous temper, that he hadridden away long before he was fit to moe. And in the darkness of this

second and fare more desolating interruption, he seems to hae hadanother dream in which a oice said to him, 48ou hae mistaken themeaning of the ision. (eturn to your own town.4 And Francis trailedback in his sickness to Assisi, a ery dismal and disappointed andperhaps een derided figure, with nothing to do but wait for what shouldhappen ne0t. *t was his first descent into a dark raine that is called thealley of humiliation, which seemed to him ery rocky and desolate, butin which he was afterwards to find many flowers.But he was not only disappointed and humiliated; he was ery muchpuzzled and bewildered. !e still firmly belieed that his two dreamsmust hae meant something; and he could not imagine what they could

possibly mean. *t was while he was drifting, one might een saymooning, about the streets of Assisi and the fields outside the city wall,that an incident occurred to him which has not always been immediatelyconnected with the business of the dreams, but which seems to me theobious culmination of them. !e was riding listlessly in some waysideplace, apparently in the open country, when he saw a figure comingalong the road towards him and halted; for he saw it was a leper. And heknew instantly that his courage was challenged, not as the world


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challenges, but as one would challenge who knew the secrets of theheart of a man. &hat he saw adancing was not the banner and spearsof /erugia, from which it neer occurred to him to shrink; nor the armiesthat fought for the crown of Sicily, of which he had always thought as acourageous man thinks of mere ulgar danger. Francis Bernadone saw

his fear coming up the road towards him; the fear that comes fromwithin and not without; though it stood white and horrible in the sunlight.For once in the long rush of his life his soul must hae stood still. 'henhe sprang from his horse, knowing nothing between stillness andswiftness, and rushed on the leper and threw his arms around him. *twas the beginning of a long ocation of ministry among many lepers, forwhom he did many serices; to this man he gae what money he couldand mounted and rode on. &e do not know how far he rode, or withwhat sense of the things around him; but it is said that when he lookedback, he could see no figure on the road.

CHAPTER IV

FRANCIS THE BUILDER

&e hae now reached the great break in the life of Francis of Assisi; thepoint at which something happened to him that must remain greatlydark to most of us, who are ordinary and selfish men whom od has notbroken to make anew.*n dealing with this difficult passage, especially for my own purpose ofmaking things moderately easy for the more secular sympathiser, * haehesitated as to the more proper course; and hae eentually decided tostate first of all what happened, with little more of a hint of what *imagine to hae been the meaning of what happened. 'he fullermeaning may be debated more easily afterwards, when it was unfoldedin the full Franciscan life. Anyway, what happened was this. 'he storyery largely reoles around the ruins of the +hurch of St. -amien, anold shrine in Assisi which was apparently neglected and falling to pieces.!ere Francis was in the habit of praying before the crucifi0 during thosedark and aimless days of transition which followed the tragical collapseof all his military ambitions, probably made bitter by some loss of socialprestige terrible to his sensitie spirit. As he did so he heard a oicesaying to him, 4Francis, seest thou not that my house is in ruins> o andrestore it for me.4Francis sprang up and went. 'o go and do something was one of thedriing demands of his nature; probably he had gone and done it beforehe had at all thoroughly thought out what he had done. *n any case whathe had done was something ery decisie and immediately erydisastrous for his singular social career. *n the coarse conentionallanguage of the uncomprehending world, he stole. From his own


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enthusiastic point of iew, he e0tended to his enerable father /eterBernadone the e0#uisite e0citement and inestimable priilege ofassisting, more or less unconsciously, in the rebuilding of St. -amiens+hurch. *n point of fact what he did first was to sell his own horse andthen go off and sell seeral bales of his father"s cloth, making the sign of

the cross oer them to indicate their pious and charitable destination./eter Bernadone did not see things in this light. /eter Bernadone indeedhad not ery much light to see by, so far as understanding the geniusand temperament of his e0traordinary son was concerned. *nstead ofunderstanding in what sort of a wind and flame of abstract appetites thelad was liing, instead of simply telling him $as the priest practically didlater% that he done an indefensible thing with the best intentions, oldBernadone took up the matter in the hardest style; in a legal and literalfashion. !e used absolute political powers like a heathen father, andhimself put his son under lock and key as a ulgar thief. *t would appearthat the cry was caught up among many with whom the unlucky Francis

had once been popular; and altogether, in his efforts to build up thehouse of od he had only succeeded in bringing his own house about hisears and lying buried under the ruins. 'he #uarrel dragged drearilythrough seeral stages; at one time the wretched young man seems tohae disappeared underground, so to speak, into some caern or cellarwhere he remained huddled hopelessly in the darkness. Anyhow, it washis blackest moment; the whole world had turned oer; the whole worldwas on top of him.&hen he came out, it was only perhaps gradually that anybody graspedthat something had happened. !e and his father were summoned in thecourt of the bishop; for Francis had refused the authority of all legal

tribunals. 'he bishop addressed some remarks to him, full of thate0cellent common sense which the +atholic +hurch keeps permanentlyas the background for all the fiery attitudes of her saints. !e told Francisthat he must un#uestionably restore the money to his father; that noblessing could follow a work done by un)ust methods; and in short $toput it crudely% if the young fanatic would gie back his money to the oldfool, the incident would then terminate. 'here was a new air aboutFrancis. !e was no longer crushed, still less crawling, so far as his fatherwas concerned; yet his words do not, * think, indicate either )ustindignation or wanton insult or anything in the nature of a merecontinuation of the #uarrel. 'hey are rather remotely akin to the

mysterious utterances of his great model, 4&hat hae * to do with thee>4or een the terrible 4'ouch me not.4!e stood up before them all and said, 49p to this time * hae called/ietro Bernadone father, but now * am the serant of od. ot only themoney but eerything that can be called his * will restore to my father,een the ery clothes he has gien me.4 And he rent off all his garmentse0cept one; and they saw that it was a hair1shirt.


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!e piled the garments in a heap on the floor and threw the money ontop of them. 'hen he turned to the bishop, and receied his blessing, likeone who turns his back on society; and, according to the account, wentout as he was into the cold world. Apparently it was literally a cold worldat the moment, and snow was on the ground. A curious detail, ery deep

in its significance, * fancy, is gien in the same account of this greatcrisis in his life. !e went out half1naked in his hair shirt into the winterwoods, walking the frozen ground between the frosty trees3 a manwithout a father. !e was penniless, he was parentless, he was to allappearances without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world; and as hewent under the frosty trees, he burst suddenly into song.*t was apparently noted as remarkable that the language in which hesang was French, or that /roencal which was called for conenienceFrench. *t was not his natie language; and it was in his natie languagethat he ultimately won fame as a poet; indeed St. Francis is one of theery first of the national poets in the purely national dialects of Europe.

But it was the language with which all his most boyish ardours andambitions had been identified; it was for him pre1eminently the languageof romance. 'hat it broke from him in this e0traordinary e0tremityseems to me something at first sight ery strange and in the lastanalysis ery significant. &hat that significance was, or may well haebeen, * will try to suggest in the subse#uent chapter; it is enough toindicate here that the whole philosophy of St. Francis reoled aroundthe idea of a new supernatural light on natural things, which meant theultimate recoery not the ultimate refusal of natural things. And for thepurpose of this purely narratie part of the business, it is enough torecord that while he wandered in the winter forest in his hair1shirt, like

the ery wildest of the hermits, he sang in the tongue of the'roubadours.2eanwhile the narratie naturally reerts to the problem of the ruined orat least neglected church, which had been the starting point of thesaint"s innocent crime and beatific punishment. 'hat problem stillpredominated in his mind and was soon engaging his insatiableactiities; but they were actiities of a new sort; and he made no moreattempts to interfere with commercial ethics of the town of Assisi. 'herehad dawned on him one of those great parado0es that are alsoplatitudes. !e realised that the way to build a church is not to becomeentangled in bargains and, to him, rather bewildering #uestions of legal

claim. 'he way to build a church is not to pay for it, certainly not withsomebody else"s money. 'he way to build a church is not to pay for iteen with your own money. 'he way to build a church is to build it.!e went about by himself collecting stones. !e begged all the people hemet to gie him stones. *n fact he became a new sort of beggar,reersing the parable; a beggar who asks not for bread but stone./robably, as happened to him again and again throughout hise0traordinary e0istence, the ery #ueerness of the re#uest gae it a sort


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of popularity; and all sorts of idle and lu0urious people fell in with thebeneolent pro)ect, as they would hae done with a bet. !e worked withhis own hands at the rebuilding of the church, dragging the material likea beast of burden and learning the ery last and lowest lessons of toil. Aast number of stories are told about Francis at this as at eery other

period of his life; but for the purpose here, which is one of simplification,it is best to dwell on this definite re1entrance of the saint into the worldby the low gate of physical labour. 'here does indeed run through thewhole of his life a sort of double meaning, like his shadow thrown uponthe wall. All his actions had something of the character of an allegory;and it is likely enough that some leaden1witted scientific historian maysome day try to proe that he himself was neer anything but anallegory. *t is true enough in this sense that he was labouring at a doubletask, and rebuilding something else as well as the church of St. -amien.!e was not only discoering the general lesson that his glory was not tobe in oerthrowing men in battle but in building up the positie and

creatie monuments of peace. !e was truly building up something else,or beginning to build it up; something that has often enough fallen intoruin but has neer been past rebuilding; a church that could always bebuilt anew though it had rotted away to its first foundation stone, againstwhich the gates of hell shall not preail.'he ne0t stage in his progress is probably marked by his transferring thesame energies of architectural reconstruction to the little church of St.2ary of the Angels at the /ortiuncula. !e had already done something ofthe same kind at a church dedicated to St. /eter; and that #uality in hislife noted aboe, which made it seem like a symbolical drama, led manyof his most deout biographers to note the numerical symbolism of the

three churches. 'here was at any rate a more historical and practicalsymbolism about two of them. For the original church of St. -amianafterwards became the seat of his striking e0periment of a female order,and of the pure and spiritual romance of St. +lare. And the church of the/ortiuncula will remain foreer as one of the great historic buildings ofthe world; for it was here that he gathered the little knot of friends andenthusiasts; it was the home of many homeless men. At this time,howeer, it is not clear that he had the definite idea of any suchmonastic deelopments. !ow early the plan appeared in his own mind itis of course impossible to say; but on the face of eents it first takes theform of a few friends who attached themseles to him one by one

because they shared his own passion for simplicity. 'he account gien ofthe form of their dedication is, howeer, significant; for it was that of aninocation of the simplification of life as suggested in the ew'estament. 'he adoration of +hrist had been a part of the man"spassionate nature for a long time past. But the imitation of +hrist, as asort of plan or ordered scheme of life, may in that sense may be said tobegin here.


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'he two men who hae the credit, apparently, of haing first perceiedsomething of what was happening in the world of the soul were a solidand wealthy citizen named Bernard of 6uintaille and a canon from aneighbouring church named /eter. *t is the more to their credit becauseFrancis, if one may put it so, was by this time wallowing in poerty and

association with lepers and ragged mendicants; and the two were menwith much to gie up; the one of comforts in the world and the other ofambition in the church. Bernard the rich burgher did #uite literally andfinally sell all he had and gie it to the poor. /eter did een more; for hedescended from a chair of spiritual authority, probably when he wasalready a man of mature years and therefore of fi0ed mental habits, tofollow an e0traagant young eccentric whom most people probablyregarded as a maniac. &hat it was which they had caught a glimpse, ofwhich Francis had seen the glory, may be suggested later so far as it canbe suggested at all. At this stage we need profess to see no more thanall Assisi saw, and that something not altogether unworthy of comment.

'he citizens of Assisi only saw the camel go in triumph through the eyeof the needle and od do impossible things because to him all thingswere possible; only a priest who rent his robes like the /ublican and notlike the /harisee and a rich man who went away )oyful, for he had nopossessions.'hese three strange figures are said to hae built themseles a sort ofhut or den ad)oining the leper hospital. 'here they talked to each other,in the interals of drudgery and danger $for it needed ten times morecourage to look after a leper than to fight for the crown of Sicily%, in theterms of their new life, almost like children talking a secret language. =fthese indiidual elements on their first friendship we can say little with

certainty; but it is certain that they remained friends to the end. Bernardof 6uintaille occupies in the story something of the position of SirBediere, 4first made and latest left of Arthur"s knights,4 for hereappears at the right hand side of the saint on his deathbed andreceies some sort of special blessing. But all these things belong toanother historical world and were #uite remote from the ragged andfantastic trio in their tumble1down hut. 'hey were not monks e0ceptperhaps in the most literal and archaic sense which was identical withhermits. 'hey were, so to speak, three solitaries liing together socially,but not as a society. 'he whole thing seems to hae been intenselyindiidual, as seen from the outside doubtless indiidual to the point of

insanity. 'he stir of something that had in it the promise of a moementor a mission can first be felt as * hae said in the affair of the appeal tothe ew 'estament.*t was a sort of sors igiliana applied to the Bible; a practice notunknown among /rotestants though open to their criticism, one wouldthink, as being rather a superstition of pagans. Anyhow it seems almostthe opposite of searching the Scriptures to open them at random; but St.Francis certainly opened them at random. According to one story, he


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merely made the sign of the cross oer the olume of the ospel andopened it at three places reading three te0ts. 'he first was the tale ofthe rich young man whose refusal to sell all his goods was the occasionof the great parado0 about the camel and the needle. 'he second wasthe commandment to the disciples to take nothing with them on their

)ourney, neither scrip nor staff nor any money. 'he third was that saying,literally to be called crucial, that the follower of +hrist must also carry hiscross. 'here is a somewhat similar story of St. Francis finding one ofthese te0ts, almost as accidentally, merely in listening to what happenedto be the ospel of the day. But from the former ersion at least it wouldseem that the incident occurred ery early indeed in his new life; for itwas after this oracle, apparently, that Bernard the first disciple rushedforth and scattered all his goods among the poor. *f this be so, it wouldseem that nothing followed it for the moment e0cept the indiidualascetical life with the hut for a hermitage. *t must of course hae been arather public sort of hermitage, but it was none the less in a ery real

sense withdrawn from the world. St. Simeon Stylites on the top of hispillar was in one sense an e0ceedingly public character; but there wassomething a little singular in his situation for all that. *t must bepresumed that most people thought the situation of Francis singular,that some een thought it too singular. 'here was ineitably indeed inany +atholic society something ultimate and een subconscious that wasat least capable of comprehending it better than a pagan or puritansociety could comprehend it. But we must not at this stage, * think,e0aggerate this potential public sympathy. As has already beensuggested, the +hurch and all its institutions had already the air of beingold and settled and sensible things, the monastic institutions amongst

the rest. +ommon sense was commoner in the 2iddle Ages, * think, thanin our own rather )umpy )ournalistic age; but men like Francis are notcommon in any age, nor are they to be fully understood merely by thee0ercise of common sense. 'he thirteenth century was certainly aprogressie period; perhaps the only really progressie period in humanhistory. But it can truly be called progressie precisely because itsprogress was ery orderly. *t is really and truly an e0ample of an epochof reforms without reolutions. But the reforms were not onlyprogressie but ery practical; and they were ery much to theadantage of highly practical institutions; the towns and the tradingguilds and the manual crafts. ow the solid men of town and guild in the

time of Francis of Assisi were probably ery solid indeed. 'hey weremuch more economically e#ual, they were much more )ustly goerned intheir own economic enironment, than the moderns who struggle madlybetween staration and the monopolist prizes of capitalism; but it likelyenough that the ma)ority of citizens were as hard1headed as peasants.+ertainly the behaiour of the enerable /ietro Bernadone does notindicate a delicate sympathy with the fine and almost fanciful subtletiesof the Franciscan spirit. And we cannot measure the beauty and


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originality of this strange spiritual adenture, unless we hae thehumour and human sympathy to put into plain words how it would haelooked to such an unsympathetic person at the time when it happened.*n the ne0t chapter * shall make an attempt, ineitably inade#uate, toindicate the inside of the story of the building of the three churches and

the little hut. *n this chapter * hae but outlined it from the outside. Andin concluding that chapter * ask the reader to remember and realizewhat the story really looked like, when thus seen from the outside. iena critic of rather coarse common sense, with no feeling about theincident e0cept annoyance, and how would the story seem to stand>A young fool or rascal is caught robbing his father and selling goodswhich he ought to guard; and the only e0planation he will offer is that aloud oice from nowhere spoke in his ear and told him to mend thecracks and holes in a particular wall. !e then declared himself naturallyindependant 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. !e then proceeds to take off hisclothes in public and practically throw them at his father; announcing atthe same time that his father is not his father at all. !e then runs aboutthe town asking eerybody he meets to gie him fragments of buildingsor building materials, apparently with reference to his old monomaniaabout mending the wall. *t may be an e0cellent thing that cracks shouldbe filled up, but preferably not by somebody who is himself cracked; andarchitectural restoration like other things is not best performed bybuilders who, as we should say, hae a tile loose. Finally the wretchedyouth relapses into rags and s#ualor and practically crawls away into thegutter. 'hat is the spectacle that Francis must hae presented to a ery

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