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SAINT CLARE
Virgin, Foundress of the Poor Clares
– AD 1253 (August 11)
The Lady Clara, "shining in name, more shining in life,"
was born in the town of Assisi about the year 1193. Her mother was to
become Blessed Ortolana di Fiumi. Her father is said to have been
Favorino Scifi, Count of Sasso-Rosso, though whether he came of that
noble branch of the Scifi family is not certain. Concerning Clara's
childhood we have no reliable information. She was eighteen years old
when St. Francis, preaching the Lenten sermons at the church of St.
George in Assisi, influenced her to change the whole course of her life.
It is likely that a marriage not to her liking had been proposed; at any
rate, she went secretly to see Friar Francis and asked him to help her
to live "after the manner of the Holy Gospel." Talking with
him strengthened her desire to leave all worldly things behind and live
for Christ. On Palm Sunday of that year, 1212, she came to the cathedral
of Assisi for the blessing of palms, but when the others went up to the
altar-rails to receive their branch of green, a sudden shyness kept
Clara back. The bishop saw it and came down from the altar and gave her
a branch. The following evening she slipped away from her home and
hurried through the woods to the chapel of the Portiuncula, where
Francis was then living with his small community. He and his brethren
had been at prayers before the altar and met her at the door with
lighted tapers in their hands. Before the Blessed Virgin's altar Clara
laid off her fine cloak, Francis sheared her hair, and gave her his own
penitential habit, a tunic of coarse cloth tied with a cord. Then, since
as yet he had no nunnery, he took her at once for safety to the
Benedictine convent of St. Paul, where she was affectionately welcomed.
When it was known at home what Clara had done, relatives and friends
came to rescue her. She resisted valiantly when they tried to drag her
away, clinging to the convent altar so firmly as to pull the cloths half
off. Baring her shorn head, she declared that Christ had called her to
His service, she would have no other spouse, and the more they continued
their persecutions the more steadfast she would become. Francis had her
removed to the nunnery of Sant' Angelo di Panzo, where her sister Agnes,
a child of fourteen, joined her. This meant more difficulty for them
both, but Agnes' constancy too was victorious, and in spite of her youth
Francis gave her the habit. Later he placed them in a small and humble
house, adjacent to his beloved church of St. Damian, on the outskirts of
Assisi, and in 1215, when Clara was about twenty-two, he appointed her
superior and gave her his rule to live by. She was soon joined by her
mother and several other women, to the number of sixteen. They had all
felt the strong appeal of poverty and sackcloth, and without regret gave
up their titles and estates to become Clara's humble disciples. Within a
few years similar convents were founded in the Italian cities of Perugia,
Padua, Rome, Venice, Mantua, Bologna, Milan, Siena, and Pisa, and also
in various parts of France and Germany. Agnes, daughter of the King of
Bohemia, established a nunnery of this order in Prague, and took the
habit herself. The "Poor Clares," as they came to be known,
practiced austerities which until then were unusual among women. They
went barefoot, slept on the ground, observed a perpetual abstinence from
meat, and spoke only when obliged to do so by necessity or charity.
Clara herself considered this silence desirable as a means of avoiding
the innumerable sins of the tongue, and for keeping the mind steadily
fixed on God. Not content with the fasts and other mortifications
required by the rule, she wore next her skin a rough shirt of hair,
fasted on vigils and every day in Lent on bread and water, and on some
days ate nothing. Francis or the bishop of Assisi sometimes had to
command her to lie on a mattress and to take a little nourishment every
day. Discretion, came with years, and much later Clara wrote this sound
advice to Agnes of Bohemia: "Since our bodies are not of brass and
our strength is not the strength of stone, but instead we are weak and
subject to corporal infirmities, I implore you vehemently in the Lord to
refrain from the exceeding rigor of abstinence which I know you
practice, so that living and hoping in the Lord you may offer Him a
reasonable service and a sacrifice seasoned with the salt of
prudence." Francis, as we know, had forbidden his order ever to
possess revenues or lands or other property, even when held in common.
The brothers were to subsist on daily contributions from the people
about them. Clara also followed this way of life. When she left home she
had given what she had to the poor, retaining nothing for her own needs
or those of the convent. Pope Gregory IX proposed to mitigate the
requirement of absolute poverty and offered to settle a yearly income on
the Poor Ladies of St. Damien. Clara, eloquent in her determination
never to break her vows to Christ and Francis, got permission to
continue as they had begun. "I need," she said, "to be
absolved from my sins, but I do not wish to be absolved from my
obligation to follow Jesus Christ." In 1228, therefore, two years
after Francis' death, the Pope granted the Assisi sisterhood a <Privilegium
paupertatis>, or Privilege of Poverty, that they might not be
constrained by anyone to accept possessions. "He who feeds the
birds of the air and gives raiment and nourishment to the lilies of the
field will not leave you in want of clothing or of food until He come
Himself to minister to you for eternity." The convents in Perugia
and Florence asked for and received this privilege; other convents
thought it more prudent to moderate their poverty. Thus began the two
observances which have ever since been perpetuated among the Poor Clares,
as they later came to be called. The houses of the mitigated rule are
called Urbanist, from the concession granted them in 1263 by Pope Urban
IV. But as early as 1247 Pope Innocent IV had published a revised form
of the rule, providing for the holding of community property. Clara, the
very embodiment of the spirit and tradition of Francis, drew up another
rule stating that the sisters should possess no property, whether as
individuals or as a community. Two days before she died this was
approved by Pope Innocent for the convent of St. Damian. Clara governed
the convent continuously from the day when Francis appointed her abbess
until her death, a period of nearly forty years. Yet it was her desire
always to be beneath all the rest, serving at table, tending the sick,
washing and kissing the feet of the lay sisters when they returned
footsore from begging. Her modesty and humility were such that after
caring for the sick and praying for them, she often had other sisters
give them furthur care, that their recovery might not be imputed to any
prayers or merits of hers. Clara's hands were forever willing to do
whatever there was of woman's work that could help Francis and his
friars. "Dispose of me as you please," she would say. "I
am yours, since I have given my will to God. It is no longer my
own." She would be the first to rise, ring the bell in the choir,
and light the candles; she would come away from prayer with radiant
face. The power and efficacy of her prayers are illustrated by a story
told by Thomas of Celano, a contemporary. In 1244, Emperor Frederick II,
then at war with the Pope, was ravaging the valley of Spoleto, which was
part of the patrimony of the Holy See. He employed many Saracens in his
army, and a troop of these infidels came in a body to plunder Assisi.
St. Damien's church, standing outside the city walls, was one of the
first objectives. While the marauders were scaling the convent walls,
Clara, ill as she was, had herself carried out to the gate and there the
Sacrament was set up in sight of the enemy. Prostrating herself before
it, she prayed aloud: "Does it please Thee, O God, to deliver into
the hands of these beasts the defenseless children whom I have nourished
with Thy love? I beseech Thee, good Lord, protect these whom now I am
not able to protect." Whereupon she heard a voice like the voice of
a little child saying, "I will have them always in My care."
She prayed again, for the city, and again the voice came, reassuring
her. She then turned to the trembling nuns and said, "Have no fear,
little daughters; trust in Jesus." At this, a sudden terror seized
their assailants and they fled in haste. Shortly afterward one of
Frederick's generals laid siege to Assisi itself for many days. Clara
told her nuns that they, who had received their bodily necessities from
the city, now owed it all the assistance in their power. She bade them
cover their heads with ashes and beseech Christ as suppliants for its
deliverance. For a whole day and night they prayed with all their might-
and with many tears, and then "God in his mercy so made issue with
temptation that the besiegers melted away and their proud leader with
them, for all he had sworn an oath to take the city." Another
story, which became very popular in later times, told how Clara and one
of her nuns once left their cloister and went down to the Portiuncula to
sup with Francis, and how a marvelous light radiated from the room where
they sat together. However, no contemporary mentions this story, nor any
other writer for at least one hundred and fifty years, whereas Thomas of
Celano says that he often heard Francis warning his followers to avoid
injudicious association with the sisters, and he states flatly that
Clara never left the enclosure of St. Damian. During her life and after
her death there was disagreement at intervals between the Poor Clares
and the Brothers Minor as to their correct relations. The nuns
maintained that the friars were under obligation to serve their needs in
things both spiritual and temporal. When in 1230 Pope Gregory IX forbade
the friars to visit the convents of the nuns without special license,
Clara feared the edict might lead to a complete severing of the ties
established by Francis. She thereupon dismissed every man attached to
her convent, those who served their material needs as well as those who
served them spiritually; if she could not have the one, she would not
have the other. The Pope wisely referred the matter to the minister
general of the Brothers Minor to adjust. After long years of sickness
borne with sublime patience, Clara's life neared its end in the summer
of 1253. Pope Innocent IV came to Assisi to give her absolution,
remarking, "Would to God I had so little need of it!" To her
nuns she said, "Praise the Lord, beloved daughters, for on this
most blessed day both Jesus Christ and his vicar have deigned to visit
me." Prelates and cardinals gathered round, and many people were
convinced that the dying woman was truly a saint. Her sister Agnes was
with her, as well as three of the early companions of Francis-Leo,
Angelo, and Juniper. They read aloud the Passion according to St. John,
as they had read it at the death-bed of Francis twenty-seven years
before. Someone exhorted Clara to patience and she replied, "Dear
brother, ever since through His servant Francis I have known the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, I have never in my whole life found any pain
or sickness that could trouble me." To herself she was heard to
say, "Go forth without fear, Christian soul, for you have a good
guide for your journey. Go forth without fear, for He that created you
has sanctified you, has always protected you, and loves you as a
mother." Pope Innocent IV and his cardinals assisted at the funeral
of the abbess. The Pope would have had her canonized immediately had not
the cardinals present advised against it. His successor, Alexander IV,
canonized her after two years, in 1255, at Anagni. Her body, which lay
first in the church of St. George in Assisi, was translated to a stately
church built to receive it in 1260. Nearly six hundred years later, in
1850, it was discovered, embalmed and intact, deep down beneath the high
altar, and subsequently removed to a new shrine in the crypt, where,
lying in a glass case, it may still be seen. In 1804 a change was made
in the rule of the Poor Clares, originally a contemplative order,
permitting these religious to take part in active work. Today there are
houses of the order in North and South America, Palestine, Ireland,
England, as well as on the Continent. The emblem of St. Clara is a
monstrance, and in art she is frequently represented with a ciborium.
SAINT COLUMBA
Abbot, Confessor – AD 597 (June 9)
Columba, the most famous of the saints associated with Scotland, was
actually an Irishman of the O'Neill or O'Donnell clan, born about the
year 521 at Garton, County Donegal, in north Ireland. Of royal lineage
on both sides, his father, Fedhlimidh, or Phelim, was great-grandson to
Niall of the Nine Hostages, Overlord of Ireland, and connected with the
Dalriada princes of southwest Scotland; his mother, Eithne, was
descended from a king of Leinster. The child was baptized Colum, or
Columba.[1] In later life he was given the name of Columcille or
Clumkill, that is, Colum of the Cell or Church, an appropriate title for
one who became the founder of so many monastic cells and religious
establishments.
As soon as he was old enough, Columba was taken from the care of his
priest-guardian at Tulach-Dugblaise, or Temple Douglas, to St. Finnian's
training school at Moville, at the head of Strangford lough. He was
about twenty, and a deacon, when he left to study in the school of
Leinster under an aged theologian and bard called Gemman. With their
songs of heroes, the bards were the preservers of Irish lore, and
Columba himself became a poet. Still later he attended the famous
monastic school of Clonard, presided over by another Finnian, who in
later times was known as the "tutor of Erin's saints." At one
time three thousand students were gathered here from all over Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales, and even from Gaul and Germany. It was probably at
Clonard that Columba was ordained priest, although it may have been
later, when he was living with his friends, Comgall, Kieran, and
Kenneth, under the most gifted of all his teachers, St. Mobhi, by a ford
in the river Tolca, called Dub Linn, the site of the future city of
Dublin. In 543 an outbreak of plague compelled Mobhi to close his
school, and Columba, now twenty-five years old and fully trained,
returned to Ulster. He was a striking figure of great stature and
powerful build, with a loud, melodious voice which could be heard from
one hilltop to another. For the next fifteen years Columba went about
Ireland preaching and founding monasteries, the chief of which were
those at Derry, Durrow, and Kells.
The powerful stimulus given to Irish learning by St. Patrick in the
previous century was now beginning to burgeon. Columba himself dearly
loved books, and spared no pains to obtain or make copies of Psalters,
Bibles, and other valuable manuscripts for his monks.-His former master
Finnian had brought back from Rome the first copy of St. Jerome's
Psalter to reach Ireland. Finnian guarded this precious volume
jealously, but Columba got permission to look at it, and surreptitiously
made a copy for his own use. Finnian, on being told of this, laid claim
to the copy. Columba refused to give it up, and the question of
ownership was put before Ring Diarmaid, Overlord of Ireland. His curious
decision in this early "copyright" case went against Columba.
"To every cow her calf," reasoned the King, "and to every
book its son-book. Therefore the copy you made, O Colum Cille, belongs
to Finnian." Columba was soon to have a more serious grievance
against the King. Prince Curnan of Connaught, who had fatally injured a
rival in a hurling match and had taken refuge with Columba, was dragged
from his protector's arms and slain by Diarmaid's men, in defiance of
the rights of sanctuary.
The war which soon broke out between Columba's clan and the clans
loyal to Diarmaid was instigated, it is said, by Columba. At the battle
of Cuil Dremne his cause was victorious, but Columba was accused of
being morally responsible for driving three thousand unprepared souls
into eternity. A church synod was held at Tailltiu (Telltown) in County
Meath, which passed a vote of censure and would have followed it by
excommunication but for the intervention of St. Brendan. Columba's own
conscience was uneasy, and on the advice of an aged hermit, Molaise, he
resolved to expiate his offense by exiling himself and trying to win for
Christ in another land as many souls as had perished in the terrible
battle of Cuil Dremne.
This traditional account of the events which led to Columba's
departure from Ireland may well be correct, although missionary zeal and
love of Christ are the motives mentioned for his going by the earliest
biographers and by Adamnan,[2] our chief authority for his subsequent
history. Whatever the impulse that prompted him, in the year 563,
Columba embarked with twelve companions in a wicker coracle covered with
leather, and on the eve of Pentecost landed on the island of Hi, or
Iona.[3] The first thing he did there was to erect a high stone cross;
then he built a monastery, which was to be his home for the rest of his
life. The island itself was made over to him by his kinsman Conall, king
of the British Dalriada, who perhaps had invited him to come to Scotland
in the first place. Lying across from the border country between the
Picts of the north and the Scots of the south, Iona made an ideal center
for missionary work. Columba seems to have first devoted himself to
teaching the imperfectly instructed Christians of Dalriada, most of whom
were of Irish descent, but after some two years he turned to the work of
converting the Scottish Picts. With his old comrades, Comgall and
Kenneth, both of them Irish Picts, he made his way through Loch Ness
northward to the castle of the redoubtable King Brude, near modern
Inverness.
That pagan monarch had given strict orders that they were not to be
admitted, but when Columba raised his arm and made the sign of the
cross, it was said that bolts fell out and gates swung open, permitting
the strangers to enter. Impressed by such powers, the King listened to
them and ever after held Columba in high regard. As Overlord of Scotland
he confirmed him in possession of Iona. We know from Adamnan that on
several occasions Columba crossed the mountain chain which divides
Scotland and that his travels also took him far north, and through the
Western Isles. He is said to have planted churches as far east as
Aberdeenshire and to have evangelized nearly the whole of the country of
the Picts. When the descendants of the Dalriada kings became the rulers
of Scotland, they were naturally eager to magnify the achievements of
their hero and distant kinsman, Columba, and may have attributed to him
victories won by others.
Columba never lost touch with Ireland. In 575 he was at the synod of
Drumceatt in County Meath in company with King Conall's successor,
Aidan, whom he had helped to place on the throne and had crowned at
Iona, in his role as chief ecclesiastical ruler. His immense influence
is shown by his veto of a proposal to abolish the order of bards and his
securing for women exemption from all military service. When not on
missionary journeys, Columba was to be found in his cell on Iona, where
persons of all conditions visited him, some in want of spiritual or
material help, some drawn by his miracles and sanctity. His biographer
gives us a picture of a serene old age. His manner of life was austere;
he slept on a bare slab of rock and ate barley or oat cakes, drinking
only water. When he became too weak to travel, he spent long hours
copying manuscripts, as he had done in his youth. On the day before his
death he was at work on a Psalter, and had just traced the words,
"They that love the Lord shall lack no good thing," when he
paused and said, "Here I must stop; let Baithin do the rest."
Baithin was his cousin. whom he had already nominated as his successor.
When the monks entered the church for Matins, they found their beloved
abbot lying helpless and dying before the altar. As his faithful
attendant Diarmaid gently upraised him, he made a feeble effort to bless
his brethren and then expired.
Iona was for centuries one of the famous centers of Christian
learning For a long time afterwards, Scotland, Ireland, and Northumbria
followed the observances Columba had set for the monastic life, in
distinction to those that were brought from Rome by later missionaries.
His rule, based on the Eastern Rule of St. Basil, was that of many
monasteries of Western Europe until superseded by the milder ordinance
of St. Benedict. Adamnan, who must have bee n brought up on memories and
recollections of Columba, writes eloquently of him: "He had the
face of an angel; he was of excellent nature, polished in speech, holy
in deed, great in council. He never let a single hour pass without
engaging in prayer or reading or writing or some other occupation. He
endured the hardships of fasting and vigils without intermission by day
and night; the burden of a single one of his labors would have seemed
beyond the powers of man. And, in the midst of all his toils, he
appeared loving unto all, serene and holy, rejoicing in the joy of the
Holy Spirit in his inmost heart."
M'Oenuran [4]
Alone am I upon the mountain;
O Royal Sun, be the way prosperous;
I have no more fear of aught
Than if there were six thousand with me.
If there were six thousand with me
Of people, though they might defend my body,
When the appointed moment of my death shall come,
There is no fortress that can resist it.
They that are ill-fated are slain even in a church,
Even on an island in the middle of a lake;
They that are well-fated are preserved in life,
Though they were in the first rank of battle, . . .
Whatever God destines for one,
He shall not go from the world till it befall him;
Though a Prince should seek anything more
Not as much as a mite shall he obtain....
O Living God, O Living God!
Woe to him who for any reason does evil.
What thou seest not come to thee,
What thou seest escapes from thy grasp.
Our fortune does not depend on sneezing.
Nor on a bird on the point of a twig,
Nor on the trunk of a crooked tree,
Nor on a sordan hand in hand,
Better is He on whom we depend,
The Father, the One, and the Son....
I reverence not the voices of birds,
Nor sneezing, nor any charm in the wide world,
Nor a child of chance, nor a woman;
My Druid is Christ, the Son of God.
Christ the Son of Mary, the great Abbot,
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost;
My Possession is the King of Kings;
My Order is in Kells and Moone.
Alone am I.
(D. Macgregor, Saint Columba, Edinburgh, 1897.)
END NOTES
[1] Some records say he was baptized Crimthan, meaning the Fox, but
that hisgentleness and goodness as a child so won all hearts that he was
rechristened Colum, or Columba, Latin for dove.
[2] The historian Adamnan was born in Donegal about 624. He became
abbot of Iona, being ninth in succession after Columba. His <Life of
St. Columba> is a rich mine of anecdote.
[3] The original form of the word was Hy or I, which is Irish for
island. Iona is one of the Inner Hebrides, just off the west coast of
Scotland. It became known also as Icolmkill, "the island of Columba
of the Cell." It had been a sacred place to the Druids before
Columba landed there, and was to become the center of Celtic
Christianity.
[4] Columba sang this song as he walked alone, it was thought to be a
protection to anyone who sang it on a journey, like the "Lorica"
of St. Patrick.
SAINT DOMINIC
Confessor, Founder of the Order of Preachers
– AD 1221 (August 8)
Dominic, founder of the great order of preaching friars
which bears his name, was born in the year 1170 at Calaruega, Castile,
Spain, of a noble family with illustrious connections. His father, Don
Felix de Guzman, held the post of royal warden of the village; his mother,
a woman of unusual sanctity, was to become Blessed Joan of Aza. Very early
it was decided that Dominic should have a career in the Church. His call
was so evident that while he was still a student, Martin de Bazan, bishop
of Osma, appointed him canon of the cathedral, and the stipend he received
helped him to continue his studies. Dominic's love of learning and his
charity are both exemplified in a story of his student days. He had
gathered a collection of religious books inscribed on parchment; these he
greatly treasured, but one day he sold the whole lot that he might give
the money thus obtained to some poor people. "I could not bear to
prize dead skins," he said, "when living skins were starving and
in need."
At the age of twenty-five he was ordained and took up
his duties. The chapter lived under the rule of St. Augustine, and the
strict observance gave the young priest the discipline that he was to
practice and teach to others all his life. Someone who knew Dominic at
this time wrote that he was first of all the monks in holiness frequenting
the church day and night, and scarcely venturing beyond the walls of the
cloister. He was soon made subprior, and when the prior, Diego d'Azevado,
became bishop of Osma. about 1201, Dominic succeeded to his office. He had
then been leading the contemplative life for six or seven years.
When, two years later, the bishop was appointed by the
King to go on an embassy to negotiate a marriage for the King's son, he
chose Dominic to accompany him. On the way, they passed through Languedoc,
in southern France, where the Albigensian heresy was winning many
adherents.[1] The host at an inn where they stopped was an Albigensian,
and Dominic spent a whole night in discussion with him. By morning he had
convinced the man of his error. From that day, it appears, Dominic knew
with certainty that the work God required of him was an active life of
teaching in the world The ambassadors returned to Castile after their
mission was accomplished, then were sent back to escort the young woman to
her future home, but they arrived only to assist at her funeral. Their
retinue returned to Castile, while they went to Rome to ask leave of Pope
Innocent III to preach the Gospel to the infidels in the East. The Pope
urged them to stay and fight against the heresy which was threatening the
Church in France. Bishop Diego begged to be allowed to resign his
episcopal see, but to this the Pope would not consent, though he gave him
permission to stay two years in Languedoc. They paid a visit to St.
Bernard's monastery at Citeaux, whose monks had been appointed to go on a
mission to convert the Albigensians. Don Diego put on the Cistercian habit
and almost at once set out with Dominic and a band of preachers.
Albigensian doctrine was based on a dualism of two
eternally opposing principles, good and evil, all matter being regarded as
evil and the creator of the material world as a devil. Hence the doctrine
of the Incarnation was denied, and the Old Testament and the Sacrament
rejected. To be perfect or "pure" a person must refrain from
sexual relations and be extremely abstemious in eating and drinking.
Suicide by starvation was by some regarded as a noble act. In its more
extreme form Albigensianism thus threatened the very existence of human
society. The rank and file did not attempt such austerity, of course, but
the leaders maintained high standards of asceticism, in contrast with
which the easy-going observance of the Cistercian preachers away from home
looked far from saintly. Dominic and Diego now advised those who had been
in charge of the mission to give up their horses, retinues, and servants.
Also, as soon as they won a hearing, they were to use the method of
peaceful persuasion instead of threats. The way of life Dominic enjoined
on others he was the first to follow himself. He rarely ate anything but
bread and soup; if he drank wine it was two thirds water; his bed was the
floor, unless-as sometimes happened-he was so exhausted that he lay down
at the side of the road to sleep.
The missionaries' first meeting with the heretics took
place at Servian in 1206, where they made several conversions; afterwards
they preached at Carcassone and neighboring towns, but nowhere did they
meet with unusual success. At one public debate the judges submitted
Dominic's statement of the Catholic faith to the ordeal by fire, and three
times, it is recorded, the parchment was left unharmed by the flames. The
heresy, supported as it was by the great spiritual and temporal lords of
the country, had a strong hold on the populace, who seemed unmoved either
by preaching or miracles. Diego, disappointed with the results, returned
to Osma, leaving Dominic in France.
Women often exerted great influence in the Middle Ages,
and Dominic was struck by their share in the propagation of Albigensianism.
He also observed that many Catholic girls of good family were exposed to
wrong examples in their own homes or else were sent to Albigensian
convents to be educated. On the feast of St. Mary Magdalen in 1206 he had
a vision which led him to found a convent at Prouille, in the diocese of
Toulouse, to shelter nine nuns, who had been converted from heresy. He
wrote for them a rule of strict enclosure, penance, and contemplation,
with the spinning of wool for their manual occupation. A house was founded
a little later, in the same locality, for his preaching friars, whom he
placed under a strict rule of poverty, study, and prayer.
In 1208, after the murder of a papal legate, Pope
Innocent called on the Christian princes to suppress the heresy by force
of arms. The Catholic forces were led by Simon de Montfort, the
Albigensian by the Count of Toulouse. Everywhere Montfort was victorious,
but he left behind him destruction and death. Dominic had no part in this
terrible civil war. Courageously he continued to preach, going wherever he
was called, seeking only the good of those who hated him. Many attempts
were made on his life, and when he was asked what he would do if caught by
his enemies, he answered, "I would tell them to kill me slowly and
painfully, a little at a time, so that I might have a more glorious crown
in Heaven." When Montfort's armies approached where he was preaching,
he did all he could to save human life. Among the crusaders themselves,
many of whom had joined the Catholic side for the sake of plunder, he
discovered disorder, vice, and ignorance. Dominic labored among them with
as much diligence and compassion as among the heretics. The Albigensian
military forces were finally crushed in the battle of Muret, in 1213, a
victory which Montfort attributed to Dominic's prayers. The victor was not
satisfied, however, and, to Dominic's great distress, kept up for five
years longer a campaign of devastation, until at last he was killed in
battle.
Dominic had no illusions as to the righteousness or
efficacy of establishing orthodoxy by armed force, nor had he himself
anything to do with the episcopal courts of the Inquisition which were set
up in southern France to work with the civil power. He never appears to
have approved of the execution of those unfortunate persons whom the
courts condemned as obdurate. His biographers say that he saved the life
of a young man on his way to the stake, by assuring the judges that, if
released, the man would die a good Catholic. The prophecy was fulfilled
some years later, when the man entered the Dominican Order. Dominic
rebuked the bishop of Toulouse for traveling with soldiers, servants, and
pack-mules. "The enemies of the faith cannot be overcome like
that," he said. "Arm yourself with prayer instead of a sword; be
clothed with humility instead of fine raiment." Offered a bishopric
three times, Dominic each time declined, knowing well that his work lay
elsewhere.
He thus spent nearly ten years in Languedoc, with
headquarters at Prouille, leading the mission and directing the work of
his special band of preachers. His great desire was to revive a true
apostolic spirit in the ministers of the altar, for too many of the
Catholic clergy lived for their own pleasure, without scruple. He dreamed
of a new religious order, not like the older ones, whose members led lives
of contemplation and prayer in isolated groups, and who were not
necessarily priests. His men would join to their prayers and meditation a
thorough training in theology and the duties of a popular pastor and
preacher; like the earlier monks, they would practice perpetual abstinence
from meat and live in poverty, depending on alms for subsistence. They
would be directed from a central authority, so that they could be moved
about according to the need of the time. Dominic hoped thus to provide the
Church with expert and zealous preachers, whose spirit and example would
spread the light. In 1214 Bishop Foulques conferred on him a benefice at
Fanjeaux, and gave his episcopal approval to the new order. A few months
later he-took Dominic with him to Rome to attend the Fourth Lateran
Council, as his theologian.
Pope Innocent III approved the convent at Prouille. He
also issued a decree, which was counted as the tenth canon of the council,
reminding all parish clergy of their obligation to preach, and stressing
the need of choosing pastors who were powerful in both words and works.
The current neglect of preaching, said the Pope, was one cause of the
ignorance, disorders, and heresies then rampant. Yet Dominic did not find
it easy to get formal approval for his preaching order; it contained too
many innovations for sanction to be granted hastily; moreover, the council
had already voted against the multiplication of religious orders.[2] It is
said that Innocent had decided to withhold his consent, but on the next
night dreamed he saw the Lateran Church[3] tottering as if on the verge of
collapse; Dominic stepped forward to support it. Be that as it may, the
Pope finally gave oral approval to Dominic's plan, bidding him return to
his brothers and select one of the rules already approved.
The little company which met at Prouille in August,
1216, consisted of eight Frenchmen, eight Spaniards, and one Englishman.
After some discussion, they chose the rule of St. Augustine, the oldest
and least detailed of the existing rules, which had been written for
priests by a priest who was himself an eminent preacher. He added certain
special provisions, some borrowed from the more austere order of Premontre.
Meanwhile Pope Innocent died, in July of 1216, and Honorius III was
elected in his place. In October of that year, after Dominic had set up a
friary in Toulouse, he went to Rome. Honorius formally confirmed his order
and its constitutions in December. The brothers were to be, in the words
of the Pope's bull, "the champions of the faith and the true lights
of the world."
Instead of returning at once to France, Dominic stayed
in Rome until the following Easter in order to preach. He suggested to the
Pope that since many of the clerics attached to his court could not attend
lectures and courses outside, a master of sacred studies in residence
would be very useful. Honorius then created the office of Master of the
Sacred Palace, who ex-officio serves as the Pope's personal canonist and
theologian, nominates his preachers, and assists at consistories. He
ordered Dominic to assume the office temporarily, and ever since it has
been held by a member of the order. While at Rome, too, Dominic composed a
commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul, much commended in his day, but,
like his sermons and letters, it has not survived.
During this time Dominic formed friendships with
Cardinal Ugolino and Francis of Assisi. The story goes that in a dream
Dominic saw the sinful world threatened by the divine anger but saved by
the intercession of the Virgin, who pointed out to her Son two figures,
one of whom Dominic recognized as himself, while the other was a stranger.
The next day in church he saw a poorly dressed fellow whom he recognized
at once as the man in his dream. It was Francis of Assisi. He went up to
him and embraced him, exclaiming, "You are my companion and must walk
with me. For if we hold together no earthly power can withstand us."
This meeting of the founders of the two great orders of friars, whose
special mission was to go out into the world to save it, is still
commemorated twice a year, when on their respective feast days the
brothers of both orders sing Mass together, and afterwards sit at the same
table. Dominic's character was in marked contrast to that of Francis, but
they stood united on the common ground of faith and charity.
On August 13, 1217, the Friars Preachers, popularly
known in later times as the Dominicans, first met as an order at Prouille.
Dominic spoke to them on methods of preaching and urged them to
unremitting study and training. He reminded them too that their primary
duty was their own sanctification, for they were to be successors of the
Apostles. They must be humble, putting their whole confidence in God
alone; only thus might they be invincible against evil. Two days later,
Dominic abruptly broke up his little band, dispersing them in different
directions. Four he sent to Spain, seven to Paris, two returned to
Toulouse, and two stayed at Prouille. Dominic himself went back to Rome.
He had hopes that he might resign his post and set off to preach to the
Tartars, but Pope Honorius would not give his consent.
The four remaining years of Dominic's life were spent in
developing the order. Honorius gave him the church of St. Sixtus in Rome
as a center for his activities. He preached in many of the city's
churches, including St. Peter's. An old chronicle tells us that a woman
named Gutadona, on coming home one day from hearing him preach, found her
little child dead. In her grief she lifted him out of the cradle, and
carried him to the church of St. Sixtus to lay him at Dominic's feet. He
uttered a few words of fervent prayer, made the sign of the cross, and the
child was straightway restored to life. The Pope would have had this
miracle proclaimed from the pulpit, but the entreaties of Dominic checked
him.
Large numbers of nuns were living in Rome at this time,
uncloistered and almost unregulated, some scattered about in small
convents, others staying in the houses of parents or friends Honorius now
asked Dominic to assemble these nuns into one enclosed house. Dominic gave
to the nuns his own monastery of St. Sixtus, which was then completed. For
his friars he was given a house on the Aventine Hill, with the adjacent
church of St. Sabina.
A house of the order had been founded at the University
of Paris, and Dominic had sent a contingent to the University of Bologna,
there to set up one of the most famous of his establishments. In 1218 he
journeyed through Languedoc to his native Spain, and founded a friary at
Segovia, another at Madrid, and a convent of nuns, directed by his
brother. In April, 1219, he returned to Toulouse, and from there went to
Paris, the first and only visit he paid to the city. On his way back he
stopped to found houses at Avignon, Asti and at Bergamo in Lombardy.
Towards the end of the summer Dominic reached Bologna, there to live until
his death. In 1220 Pope Honorius confirmed his title as Master General of
the Order of Brothers Preachers, and the first general chapter was held at
Bologna. The final constitutions were then drawn up which made the order
what it has since been called, "the most perfect of all the monastic
organizations produced by the Middle Ages." That same year the Pope
charged them, along with the monks of other orders, to undertake a
preaching crusade in Lombardy. Under Dominic's leadership, a hundred
thousand heretics are said to have been brought back to the Church.
Although Dominic had hoped to journey to barbarous lands
to preach and eventually to achieve martyrdom, this was denied him. The
ministry of the Word, however, was to be the chief aim of his great order.
Those members who had a talent for preaching were never to rest, except
during the intervals assigned to them for retirement They must prepare for
their high calling by prayer, self-denial, and obedience. Dominic
frequently quoted the saying: "A man who governs his passions is
master of the world. We must either rule them, or be ruled by them. It is
better to be the hammer than the anvil." He taught his friars the art
of reaching the hearts of their hearers by animating them with a love of
men. Once, after delivering a stirring sermon, he was asked in what book
he had studied it. "In none," he answered, "but that of
love."
Dominic never altered the severe discipline he had
established at the start. When he came back to Bologna in 1220, he was
shocked to find a stately monastery being built for his friars; he would
not allow it to be completed. This strong discipline helped the rapid
spread of the order. By the time of the second general chapter at Bologna
in 1221, it numbered some sixty houses, divided into eight provinces.
Already there were black- robed brothers in Poland, Scandinavia, and
Palestine, and Brother Gilbert, with twelve to aid him, had set up
monasteries in Canterbury, London, and Oxford. The Order of Preachers is
world-wide and noted especially for its intellectual achievement; it has
become the mouthpiece of scholastic theology and philosophy today. There
are Dominican establishments adjacent to almost all the chief seats of
learning, and the founder has sometimes been called "the first
minister of public instruction in Europe." The Dominicans are
cloistered, but there is also a Third Order for active workers in the
world, religious and lay.
At the close of the second general chapter, Dominic
visited Cardinal Ugolino in Venice. Afterwards he fell ill and was taken
to the country. He knew the end was near, and made his last testament in a
few simple, loving words: "These, my much loved ones, are the
bequests which I leave to you as my sons; have charity among yourselves;
hold fast to humility; keep a willing poverty." He asked to be
carried back to Bologna, that he might be buried "under the feet of
his brethren." Gathered about him on an August evening, they said the
prayers for the dying; at the Subvenite, he repeated the words and died;
he was only fifty-six years old. The saint died "in Brother Moneta's
bed, because he had none of his own, in Brother Moneta's habit, because he
had not another to replace the one he had long been wearing."
Jordan of Saxony, Dominic's successor as master-general
of the order, wrote of him: "Nothing disturbed the even temper of his
soul except his quick sympathy with every sort of suffering. And as a
man's face shows whether he is happy or not, it was easy to see from his
friendly and joyous countenance that he was at peace inwardly." When
in 1234 Pope Gregory IX, formerly Cardinal Ugolino, signed the decree of
canonization, he remarked that he no more doubted the sanctity of Dominic
than he doubted that of St. Peter or St. Paul.
END NOTES:
[1] Albigenses - A neo-Manichæan sect that flourished in southern France in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. The Albigenses asserted the co-existence of two mutually opposed principles,
one good, the other evil. The former is the creator of the spiritual, the latter of the
material world. The Old Testament must be either partly or entirely ascribed to
[the bad principle]; whereas the New Testament is the revelation of the beneficent God.
[2] The Franciscan Order had been orally Confirmed only
seven years before.
[3] The church of St. John Lateran has the highest rank
of any church in the Catholic world. The palace of the Laterani family was
bestowed by the Emperor Constantine on the pope, and the church built
beside it is the cathedral church of the pope as bishop of Rome. The
palace was the residence of the popes from the fourth century to the
fourteenth, when it was destroyed by fire.
SAINT FRANCIS of ASSISI
Founder of the Friars Minor - AD 1226
(October 4)
Francis was born in the stony hill-town of Assisi in
Umbria, in the year 1181 or 1182. His father, Peter Bernadone, was a
wealthy merchant. His mother, Pica, by some accounts was gently born and
of Provencal blood. Much of Bernadone's trade was with France, and his son
was born while he was absent in that country. Perhaps for this reason the
child was called Francesco, "the French man," though his
baptismal name was John. As a youth he was ardent in his amusements and
seemed carried away by the mere joy of living, taking no interest at all
in his father's business or in formal learning. Bernadone, proud to have
his son finely dressed and associating with young noblemen, gave him
plenty of money, which Francis spent carelessly. Though Francis was
high-spirited, he was too fastidious to lead a dissolute life. It was the
age of chivalry, and he was thrilled by the songs of the troubadours and
the deeds of knights. At the age of twenty or thereabouts, during a petty
war between the towns of Assisi and Perugia, he was taken prisoner. During
a year of captivity he remained cheerful and kept up the spirits of his
companions. Soon after his release he suffered a long illness. This he
bore with patience.
After his recovery Francis joined the troop of a knight
of Assisi who was riding south to fight under Walter de Brienne for the
Pope against the Germans. Having equipped himself with sumptuous apparel
and fine armor, he fared forth. On the way he met a knight shabbily clad,
and was so touched with compassion that he exchanged clothes with him.
That night he dreamed he saw his father's house transformed into a castle,
its walls hung with armor, all marked with the sign of the cross; and he
heard a voice saying that the armor belonged to Francis and his soldiers.
Confident now that he would win glory as a knight, he set out again, but
on the first day fell ill. While lying helpless, a voice seemed to tell
him to turn back, and "to serve the Master rather than the man."
Francis obeyed. At home he began to take long rambles in the country and
to spend many hours by himself; he felt contempt for a life wasted on
trivial and transitory things. It was a time of spiritual crisis during
which he was quietly searching for something worthy of his complete
devotion. A deep compassion was growing within him. Riding one day in the
plains below Assisi, he met a leper whose loathsome sores filled Francis
with horror. Overcoming his revulsion, he leapt from his horse and pressed
into the leper's hand all the money he had with him, then kissed the hand.
This was a turning point in his life. He started visiting hospitals,
especially the refuge for lepers, which most persons avoided. On a
pilgrimage to Rome, he emptied his purse at St. Peter's tomb, then went
out to the swarm of beggars at the door, gave his clothes to the one that
looked poorest, dressed himself in the fellow's rags, and stood there all
day with hand outstretched. The rich young man would experience for
himself the bitterness and humiliation of poverty.
One day, after his return from Rome, as he prayed in the
humble little church of St. Damian outside the walls of Assisi, he felt
the eyes of the Christ on the crucifix gazing at him and heard a voice
saying three times, "Francis, go and repair My house, which you see
is falling down." The building, he observed, was old and ready to
fall. Assured that he had now found the right path, Francis went home and
in the singleness and simplicity of his heart took a horse-load of cloth
out of his father's warehouse and sold it, together with the horse that
carried it, in the market at the neighboring town of Foligno. He then
brought the money to the poor priest of St. Damian's church, and asked if
he might stay there. Although the priest accepted Francis' companionship,
he refused the money, which Francis left lying on a window sill. Bernadone,
furious at his son's waywardness, came to St. Damian's to bring him home,
but Francis hid himself and could not be found.
He spent some days in prayer, and then went bravely to
see his father. He was now so thin and ill-clad that boys in the streets
pelted him and called him mad. The exasperated Bernadone beat Francis,
fettered his feet, and locked him up. A little later his mother set him
free and Francis returned to St. Damian's. His father pursued him there
and angrily declared that he must either return home or renounce his share
in his inheritance-and pay the purchase price of the horse and the goods
he had taken as well. Francis made no objection to being disinherited, but
protested that the other money now belonged to God and the poor. Bernadone
had him summoned for trial before Guido, the bishop of Assisi, who heard
the story and told the young man to restore the money and trust in God.
"He does not wish," the bishop said, "to have His church
profit by goods which may have been unjustly acquired." Francis not
only gave back the money but went even further. "My clothing is also
his," he said, and stripped off his garments. "Hither to I have
called Peter Bernadone father.... From now on I say only, 'Our Father, who
art in Heaven."' Bernadone left the court in sorrow and rage, while
the bishop covered the young man with his own cloak until a gardener's
smock was brought. Francis marked a cross on the shoulder of the garment
with chalk, and put it on.
Henceforth he was completely cut off from his family,
and began a strange new life. He roamed the highways, singing God's
praise. In a wood some robbers stopped him and asked who he was. When he
answered soberly, "I am the herald of the Great King," they
jeered and threw him into a ditch. He picked himself up and continued on
his way singing. At a monastery, Francis was given alms and a job of work,
as a poor traveler. Trudging on to the town of Gubbio, he was recognized
by a friend, who took him to his house and gave him a proper tunic, belt,
and shoes. These he wore for nearly two years as he walked about the
countryside. When he returned to St. Damian's the priest welcomed him, and
Francis now began in earnest to repair the church, begging for building
stones in the streets of Assisi and carrying off those that were given
him. He labored with the masons in the actual reconstruction, and, by the
spring of 1208, the church was once more in good condition. Next he
repaired an old chapel dedicated to St. Peter. By this time many people,
impressed by his sincerity and enthusiasm, were willing to contribute to
the work. Francis was now attracted to a tiny chapel known as St. Mary of
the Portiuncula, belonging to a Benedictine monastery on Monte Subasio. It
stood in the wooded plain, some two miles below Assisi, forsaken and in
ruins. Francis rebuilt it as he had done the others, and seems to have
thought of spending his life there as a hermit, in peace and seclusion.
Here on the feast of St. Matthias, in 1209, the way of life he was to
follow was revealed to him. The Gospel of the Mass for this day was
Matthew X,7-19: "And going, preach, saying The Kingdom of Heaven is
at hand.... Freely have you received, freely give. Take neither gold nor
silver nor brass in your purses . . . nor two coats nor shoes nor a
staff.... Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of
wolves...." These words suddenly became Christ's direct charge to
him. His doubts over, he cast off shoes, staff, and leathern girdle, but
kept his rough woolen coat, which he tied about him with a rope. This was
the habit he gave his friars the following year. In this garb he went to
Assisi the next morning and, with a moving warmth and sincerity, began to
speak to the people he met on the shortness of life, the need of
repentence, and the love of God. His salutation to those he passed on the
road was, "Our Lord give you peace."
An early disciple was Bernard Quintavalle, a rich and
prudent merchant of the city, who invited Francis to stay at his house. At
night they had long talks, and there was no mistaking Francis' passionate
dedication. Bernard soon informed Francis that he would sell all his goods
and give the proceeds to the poor and join him. Shortly afterward, a canon
of the cathedral, Peter de Cattaneo, asked to come with them. The three
then went down to the Portiuncula, where, on April 16, Francis "gave
his habit" to these two companions and they built themselves simple
huts. Brother Giles, a man of great gentleness and purity of spirit, was
the next to come, and others soon followed.
For a year Francis and his now numerous companions
preached among the peasants and helped them in the fields. A brief rule
which has not been preserved was drawn up. Apparently it consisted of
little more than the passages from the Gospel which Francis had read to
his first followers, with brief injunctions to manual labor, simplicity,
and poverty. In the summer of 1210 he and some of the others carried it to
Rome to obtain the Pope's approbation. Innocent III, the great ruler of
Catholic Europe, listened but hesitated. Most of the cardinals he
consulted thought that the existing orders should be reformed before their
number was increased and that the proposed rule for the new organization,
taken though it was from Christ's own command, was impractical. Cardinal
John Colonna, who pleaded for Francis, was deputed to examine him as to
his orthodoxy, while Innocent considered the matter. Later the Pope
dreamed he saw Francis propping up the Lateran Church with his shoulder.
He was to see Dominic in a similar position five years later. Summoning
Francis and his companions, he orally approved their mission of preaching
penitence, only requiring that they always get the consent of the local
bishop; also they must choose a leader with whom the ecclesiastical
authorities might communicate. Francis was thereupon elected head, and
Cardinal Colonna gave them the monk's tonsure.
Francis and his little band returned to Umbria
rejoicing. A temporary shelter was found near the foot of Monte Subasio,
and from there they went out in all directions preaching repentance, and
the blessedness of doing God's will. The cathedral of Assisi was the only
church large enough to hold the crowds that flocked to hear them,
especially after it was known that their rule had papal approval. Soon the
abbot of the Benedictine monastery gave them in perpetuity their beloved
Portiuncula chapel and the ground on which it stood. Francis would accept
only the use of the property. The spirit of holy poverty must govern their
order, if they were to be disciples of Him who had not where to lay His
head. In token of this arrangement, the friars sent to the Benedictines
every year as rent a basket of fish caught in a neighboring river. In
return, the monks gave the friars a barrel of oil. This annual exchange of
gifts still goes on between the Benedictines of St. Peter's in Assisi and
the Franciscans of the Portiuncula. On the ground around the chapel the
friars quickly built themselves some huts of wood and clay, enclosing them
by a hedge. This was the first Franciscan monastery.
Because the body was meant to carry burdens, to eat
scantily and coarsely, and to be beaten when sluggish or refractory,
Francis called it Brother Ass. When, early in his new life, he was
violently tempted, he threw himself naked into a ditch full of snow. Again
when tempted like Benedict he plunged into a briar patch and rolled about
until he was torn and bleeding. Yet before he died he asked pardon of his
body for having treated it so cruelly; by that time he considered
excessive austerities wrong, especially if they decreased the power to
labor. He had no use for eccentricity for its own sake. Once when he was
told that a friar so loved silence that he would confess only by signs,
his comment was, "That is not the spirit of God but of the Devil, a
temptation, not a virtue."
Francis was reverently in love with all natural
phenomena- sun, moon, air, water, fire, flowers; his quick warm sympathies
responded to all that lived. His tenderness for and his power over animals
were noted again and again. From his companions we have the story of his
rebuke to the noisy swallows who were disturbing his preaching at Alviano:
"Little sister swallows, it is now my turn to speak; you have been
talking enough all this time." We hear also of the birds that perched
attentively around when he told them to sing their Creator's praises, of
the rabbit that would not leave him at Lake Trasymene, and of the tamed
wolf of Gubbio-all incidents that have inspired innumerable artists and
story tellers.
The early years were a time of training in poverty,
mutual help, and brotherly love. The friars worked at their various trades
and in the fields of neighboring farmers to earn their bread. When work
was lacking, they begged, though they were forbidden to take money. They
were especially at the service of lepers, and those who were helpless and
suffering. Among the recruits soon to present themselves were the
"Three Companions," Angelo, Leo, and Rufino, who were in time to
write of their beloved leader; and the ''renowned jester of the
Lord," Brother Juniper, of whom Francis said, "I would I had a
forest of such junipers." It was he who, while a crowd was waiting to
receive him at Rome, was found playing seesaw with some children outside
the city.
In the spring of 1212, an eighteen-year-old girl of
Assisi named Clara[1] heard Francis preach in the cathedral and left her
father's castle to take the vow of poverty and become a disciple. The
monks of Monte Subasio again aided Francis by giving him a place where
Clara and her earliest followers could be lodged; to them he gave the same
rules as the brothers had. In the autumn of that year Francis resolved to
go as a crusader of peace to the Mohammedans of the East. With a companion
he embarked for Syria, only to suffer shipwreck off the Dalmatian coast.
Having no money for the return passage, they got back to Ancona as
stowaways. The following year Francis preached up and down central Italy.
In 1214 he made another attempt to reach the Mohammedans, this time by the
land route through Spain. So eager was he to arrive that his companion
could scarcely keep up with him on the road. But once more Francis was
disappointed, for in Spain he was taken ill and had to return to Italy.
There, on his recovery, he resumed direction of the
order and his tours of preaching. To the order he gave the name of Friars
Minor, Little Brothers, to express his wish that they should never be in
positions above their fellows. Many cities were now anxious to have the
brothers in their midst to act as peace-makers in periods of civil strife,
and small communities of them sprang up rapidly throughout Umbria,
Tuscany, and Lombardy. In 1215 Francis went to Rome for the great Council
of the Lateran, which was also attended by the future St. Dominic, who had
begun his missionary work in Languedoc while Francis was still a youth.
At Pentecost in 1217 a general chapter of all Friars
Minor was held at Assisi. They had now become so numerous and so widely
dispersed that some more systematic organization was necessary. Italy was
divided into provinces, each in charge of a responsible minister
provincial. "Should anyone be lost through the minister's fault and
bad example, that minister will have to give an account before our Lord
Jesus Christ." Missions were sent to Spain, Germany, and Hungary, and
Francis himself made plans to go to France, of which he had heard so much
in childhood from his father. He was dissuaded by Cardinal Ugolino, who
after the death of Cardinal John Colonna began to serve as advisor to the
new convent. He sent instead Brother Pacifico and Brother Agnello; the
latter was afterwards to establish the order in England.
Although still the head, Francis was prevailed on at
times to submit to the prudent Ugolino. The cardinal actually presided at
the general chapter of 1219, called, like its predecessor, a "mat
chapter" because of the huts of wattles and straw hastily put up to
shelter the five thousand friars present. The more learned and
worldly-wise of the brothers were critical of the free and venturesome
spirit of their founder, who, they claimed, was improvident and naive.
They wanted more material security and a more elaborate rule, similar to
that of the older orders. Francis defended his position with spirit:
"My brothers, the Lord called me into the way of simplicity and
humility, and this way He has pointed out to me for myself and for those
who will believe and follow me.... The Lord told me he would have me poor
and foolish in this world, . . . God will confound you by your own wisdom
and learning, and, for all your fault-finding, bring you repentance
whether you will or no."
From this chapter Francis sent some of his friars on
missions to the infidels in Tunisia, Morocco, and Spain, while he himself
undertook one to the Saracens of Egypt and Syria, embarking with eleven
friars from Ancona in June, 1219. At the city of Damietta on the Nila
Delta, which the crusaders were besieging, Francis was deeply shocked at
the profligacy, the cynicism, and the lack of discipline of the soldiers
of the cross. When in August the leaders prepared to attack, he predicted
failure and tried to dissuade them from the attempt. The Christians were
driven back with the slaughter of six thousand men, yet they continued the
siege, and at last took the city. Meanwhile, a number of the soldiers had
pledged themselves to live by Francis' rule. He also paid several visits
to the Saracen leader, Melek-el-Kamil, Sultan of Egypt. There is a story
to the effect that he first went among the enemy with only Brother
Illuminato, calling out, "Sultan! Sultan!" When he was brought
before the Sultan and asked his errand, Francis replied boldly, "I am
sent by the Most High God, to show you and your people the way of
salvation by announcing to you the truths of the Gospel." Discussion
followed, and other audiences. The Sultan, somewhat moved, invited Francis
to stay with him. "If you and your people," said Francis,
"will accept the word of God, I will with joy stay with you. If you
yet waver between Christ and Mohammed, order a fire kindled and I will go
into it with your priests that you may see which is the true faith."
The Sultan replied that he did not think any of his <imams> would
dare to enter the fire, and he would not accept Francis' condition for
fear of upsetting the people. He offered him many presents, which Francis
refused. Fearing finally that some of his Moslems might desert to the
Christians, he sent Francis, under guard, back to the camp.
Sickened by the senseless slaughter and brutality that
marked the taking of the city, Francis went on to visit the Holy Places of
Palestine. When he returned to Italy he found that in his absence his
vicars, Matthew of Narni and Gregory of Naples, had held a general chapter
and introduced certain innovations, tending to bring the Franciscans a
little more into line with other orders and to confine them in a more
rigid framework. At several of the women's convents, regular
constitutions, drawn up on the Benedictine model, had been imposed by
Cardinal Ugolino. In Bologna Francis found his brothers housed in a fine
new monastery. He refused to enter it, and went for lodging to Dominic's
Friars Preachers. Sending for his provincial minister, he upbraided him,
and ordered the friars to leave the building. He felt that his fundamental
idea was being betrayed. It was a serious crisis, but it ended in Francis'
acceptance of some measure of change. Ugolino convinced him that he
himself, not the order, was the owner of the new building; also that
systematic supervision and regulation were necessary for such a far-flung
organization. Francis' profound humility made him ready to blame himself
for anything that went wrong. He would not give up his faith in the way of
life that Christ had shown him, but he became less confident. He finally
went to Pope Honorius III and asked that the cardinal be made official
protector and counselor of the order. At the chapter meeting of 1220 he
resigned his position as minister general; in May, 1221, he offered his
draft for a revised rule, a long and confused document, containing a new
requirement, a year's novitiate before a candidate could be admitted;
there were long extracts from the New Testament, and passionate appeals to
the brothers to preserve the old life of poverty and love. The jurists of
the order, those who knew the problems of administration, and the
provincial ministers all wanted something more precise, a rule which could
be understood and followed anywhere in the world by men who had never seen
Francis, and which would also keep Franciscans from diverging too widely
from the established usages of the historic Church.
Once at least during the two years that followed,
Francis broke away to the solitude of a mountain near Rieti, and worked
over the rule alone. The final result he delivered to Brother Elias of
Cortona, then minister general, but the copy was somehow lost, and Francis
patiently dictated the substance of it to Brother Leo. In the form in
which it was at last presented to the chapter general in 1223 and solemnly
approved by Pope Honorius it has remained ever since. The words of Christ
which made up almost all of the original rule of 1210 are omitted. It is
explicit on a number of points which in 1210 had been left
indefinite-methods of admission, times of fasting, government by ministers
and triennial general chapters, requirements for preaching, obedience to
superiors; at the head of all is a cardinal governor appointed by the
pope. The early simplicity is gone, though now and again the fervor of
Franciscan idealism breaks through the sober text. The brothers are still
to receive no money, to labor as far as they are able, to own no house
"nor anything." They are not to be ashamed to beg, since
"the Lord made himself poor for us in this world." They are not
to trouble to educate illiterate brothers but to strive instead for pure
hearts, humility, and patience. The contrast, however, between the old
rule and the new shocked and pained some of the members. Yet it seemed
true that such a great institution could not be run without a system of
uniform control or let its members wander as they pleased over the earth,
with no churches of their own where they could preach regularly, and no
house where they could live together. To Brother Elias, the able and
masterful friar who with Cardinal Ugolino became the directing force,
there was still too much of the unworkable Franciscan dream in the new
rule and in later years he refused to be bound by it. In 1230 the
cardinal, then Pope Gregory IX, issued an official interpretation of it.
Somewhat earlier Francis and the cardinal had drawn up a
rule for the fraternity of lay men and women who wished to associate
themselves with the Friars Minor and followed as best they could the rules
of humility, labor, charity, and voluntary poverty, without withdrawing
from the world: the Franciscan tertiaries or Third Order of today.[2]
These congregations of lay penitents became a power in the religious life
of the late Middle Ages.
The Christmas season of 1223 Francis spent near the
village of Greccio in the valley of Rieti, weary in mind and body. There
he remarked to his friend, the knight, Giovanni di Vellita, "I would
make a memorial of that Child who was born in Bethlehem, and in some sort
behold with bodily eyes the hardships of His infant state, lying on hay in
a manger, with the ox and the ass standing by." So a rude stable was
set up at the hermitage, with a live ox and ass, and a child lying on
straw, and the people crowded to the midnight Mass, at which Francis as
deacon read the Gospel story and then preached. His use of the creche gave
impetus to its later popularity. Having become extremely frail, he
remained at Greccio for some months longer.
In June, 1224, Francis attended his last chapter
meeting, at which the new rule was formally delivered to the provincial
ministers. In August, with a few of the brothers closest to him, he made
his way through the Apennine forest to the peak of Alvernia, a place of
retreat put at his disposal years earlier by the lord of Chiusi. A hut of
branches was built for him, a little way from his companions. Brother Leo
daily brought him food. His fears for the future of the order now
increased and reached a climax. And here it was, on or about Holy Cross
Day, September 14, that at sunrise, after a night of prayer, he had a
vision of a winged seraph, nailed to a cross, flying towards him; he also
felt keen stabs of pain in hands, feet, and sides. The vision vanished,
and he discovered on his body the stigmata of the crucified Christ. During
his lifetime, few persons saw the stigmata, called by Dante, "the
ultimate seal." Thenceforth he kept his hands covered with the
sleeves of his habit, and wore shoes and stockings. To those who were
there with him, he disclosed what had happened, and within a few days
composed the poem, "Praise of the Most High God."
After celebrating the feast of St. Michael on September
29, the now enfeebled friar rode down the mountain on a borrowed horse,
and healed several persons who were brought to him in the plain below.
Weak as he was, he insisted on preaching, riding from village to village
on an ass. Young and ambitious members of the order, already set on
rivaling the Dominicans as brilliant and popular preachers in the towns,
were eager to outshine them in the schools as well. Francis realized that
learning had its uses, but to fulfill their special mission, he knew that
his brothers needed much time for prayer, meditation, and helpful labor.
He feared the prescribed scholastic training, thinking it tended to feed
conceit and extinguish charity and piety. Above all, Lady Learning was
dangerous as a rival to Lady Poverty. Yet under pressure he yielded so far
as to consent to the appointment of Antony of Padua as reader and teacher.
Francis' health was growing worse, the stigmata were a
source of pain, and his eyes were failing. In the summer of 1225 Cardinal
Ugolino and the vicar-general, Elias, made him consent to put himself in
the hands of the Pope's physician at Rieti. On his way there he stopped to
pay a final visit to Abbess Clara and the nuns of St. Damian He stayed for
over a month, and seemed depressed by his apparent failure to accomplish
his mission in life. For two weeks he lost his sight, but finally
triumphed over suffering and gloom, and in a sudden ecstasy one day
composed the beautiful, triumphant "Canticle of the Sun," and
set it to music. The brothers might sing it as they went about their
preaching. He went on to Rieti to undergo the agonizing treatment
prescribed- cauterization of the forehead by white-hot iron, and plasters
to keep the wound open. Strangely enough, he obtained some relief. During
the winter he preached a little, and dictated a long letter to his
brothers, which he hoped would be read at the opening of future general
chapters. They were to love one another, to love and follow Lady Poverty,
to love and reverence the Eucharist, and to love and honor the clergy. He
also composed a still longer letter to all Christians, repeating his
message of love and harmony.
Yearning to be at home, when spring came he was carried
north to Assisi and lodged in the bishop's palace, but these fine
surroundings depressed Francis, and he begged to be taken to the
Portiuncula. As they bore him down the hill, he asked to have the
stretcher set down, and turning back for a moment towards the city he
blessed it and bade it farewell. At the Portiuncula he was able to dictate
his Will, a final, firm defense of all he had been and done. No one coming
after him must introduce glosses to explain away any part of the rule or
of this Will, for he had written it "in a clear and simple
manner" and it should be understood in the same way and practiced
"until the end." Four years later Ugolino, then Pope Gregory IX,
at the same time that he gave an official interpretation of the rule,
announced that the brothers were not bound to observe the Will.
As the end drew near, Francis asked his brothers to send
to Rome for the Lady Giacoma di Settesoli, who had often befriended him.
Even before the messenger started, the lady arrived at his bedside.
Francis also sent a last message to Clara and her nuns. While the brothers
stood about him singing the "Canticle of the Sun," with the new
stanza he had lately given them, in praise of Sister Death, he repeated
the one hundred and forty-first Psalm, "I cried to the Lord with my
voice; with my voice I made supplication to the Lord." At his request
he was stripped of his clothing and laid for a while on the ground that
dying he might rest in the arms of Lady Poverty. Back upon his pallet once
more, he called for bread and broke it and to each one present gave a
piece in token of their love. The Gospel for Holy Thursday, the story of
the Lord's Passion as told by St. John, was read aloud. And as darkness
fell on Saturday, October 3, 1226, Francis died.
He had asked to be buried in the criminals' cemetery in
the Colle d'Inferno, but early the next morning a crowd of his fellow
citizens came down and bore his body to the church of St. George in
Assisi. Here it remained for two years, during which time a process of
canonization was being carried through. In 1228 the first stone was laid
for the beautiful basilica built in Francis' honor, under the direction of
Brother Elias. In 1230 his body was secretly removed to it and, in fear
that the Perugians might send a raiding party to steal it, buried so deep
that not until 1818, after a fifty-two days' search, was it discovered
beneath the high altar of the lower church.
SAINT FRANCIS de SALES
Bishop, Doctor of the Church,
Co-Founder of the Order of the Visitation – AD 1622 (January 24)
Francis de Sales was born at the Chateau de Sales in
Swiss Savoy on August 21, 1567, and at his baptism in the parish church of
Thorens was named Francis Bonaventura, for two greatly loved Franciscan
saints. The room in which he was born was known as the "St. Francis
room," from an old painting on the wall showing the friar of Assisi
preaching to the birds; and it was this lover of all living creatures whom
Francis de Sales was to choose as his patron in later years. His father,
the Seigneur de Nouvelles, was an aristocrat who had served his country
well in war and peace. On his marriage to the only child of Melchior de
Sionnaz, who brought as her dowry the Signory of Boisy, he took the name
of Boisy. When Francis was born, the eldest of thirteen children, his
mother was only fifteen. The boy was frail at birth, but with devoted care
he grew to vigorous maturity.
Young as she was, Francis' mother kept his early
education largely in her own hands; after a few years she was aided by the
excellent Abbe Deage, who acted as the boy's tutor and companion. Francis
was obedient, truthful, and habitually generous to those less fortunate
than himself. He was responsive in matters of religion, and seems to have
loved books and knowledge. At the age of eight he was sent to the nearby
college of Annecy, and there, in the church of St. Dominic (now called St.
Maurice), he made his First Communion and received Confirmation. A year
later he was permitted to take the tonsure, for he was set even then on
consecrating himself to the Church, and this was regarded as the first
step. His father, a worldly man, who planned a brilliant career for his
son in public life, attached little importance to the ceremony. In his
fourteenth year Francis went to the University of Paris, accompanied by
the Abbe Deage. The University, with its fifty-four colleges, was still
the most famous center of learning in Europe. Monsieur de Boisy had
selected for his son the College of Navarre, for it was frequented by the
sons of the noble families of Savoy, but Francis resolved to go to the
College of Clermont which was under Jesuit direction, and renowned for
both piety and scholarship.
At the College of Clermont Francis soon excelled in
rhetoric and philosophy, and other subjects arousing his most fervent
enthusiasm were theology and the Scriptures. To please his father, he took
lessons in riding, dancing, and fencing, but cared for none of these
gentlemanly accomplishments. During this time his heart became more and
more fixed on giving himself to God, and he took a vow of perpetual
chastity, placing himself under the special protection of the Blessed
Virgin. He was, nevertheless, not free from trials. The love of God had
always meant more to him than anything else, and now he became prey to the
fear that he had lost God's favor. This obsession haunted him day and
night. It was a heroic act of pure love that finally brought him
deliverance. "O Lord," he cried, "if I am never to see Thee
in Heaven, this at least grant me, that I may never curse or blaspheme Thy
holy name. If I may not love Thee in the other world-for in Hell none
praise Thee-let me at least every instant of my brief existence here love
Thee as much as I can." Directly afterwards, as he knelt in the
church, all fear and despair suddenly left him and he was filled with
peace. This experience of his youth taught him to deal understandingly
with the spiritual crises of those who, at a later period, looked to him
for guidance.
After six years in Paris he was called home by his
father, who sent him to the University of Padua to study jurisprudence. He
was at Padua for four years, and there, as at Paris, he won a name for
scholarship and virtuous conduct. At twenty-four he was given the degree
of Doctor of Law. A pilgrimage to Loreto and a short stay at Rome
followed, then he returned to his father's chateau. For some eighteen
months, he led, at least outwardly, the life of a conventional young
nobleman. That his son and heir should now settle down and marry was
Boisy's desire, and this autocratic father had already chosen for him a
charming bride. Francis, by his distant though courteous manner to the
young lady, soon made it plain that in this matter, as in many others, he
could not carry out his father's wishes. Not long afterwards he again
annoyed his father by declining the honor offered him by the prince of
Savoy of a seat in the senate, an unusual compliment to one so young.
The Catholic bishop of Geneva, Claude de Granier, was
living at Annecy, his own diocese now being in Calvinist hands. The
bishop, impressed by Francis' character, is reported to have made this
prophetic utterance to those about him: "This young man will be a
great personage some day! He will become a pillar of the Church and my
successor in this see." So far Francis had confided only to his
mother and a few friends his desire for a life in the Church; an
explanation to his father now became inevitable. Monsieur de Boisy had
been much chagrined by his son's refusal to marry and also by his
rejection of the senatorship, but he was not prepared for this new
disappointment. He withheld his consent. The unexpected death just then of
the provost of the chapter of cathedral canons made Francis' cousin, Canon
Louis de Sales, hope that Francis might be appointed to this honorable
post, in which case his father might yield. The post was offered, Francis
accepted it, and thus he finally obtained his father's permission to enter
the priesthood. The young man was already so well prepared by his purity
of life and by his theological studies that there was no need for the
usual delay. On the very day his father gave his consent, Francis put on
ecclesiastical dress and three weeks later took minor orders. Six months
afterwards, on December 18, 1593, at the age of twenty-six, he was
ordained priest by the bishop of Geneva in the parish church of Thorens.
Before offering the Holy Sacrifice, Francis went into a
short retreat, during which he made several important resolutions. One of
these was to use every moment of the day as a preparation for the morrow's
Mass, so that if he were asked, "What are you doing at this
moment?" he could always truly answer, "Preparing to celebrate
Mass." On the feast of St. Thomas, December 21, in the cathedral of
Annecy, he consecrated the Host for the first time, his parents being
among those who received Communion at his hands. A few days later he was
installed provost of the chapter of Geneva. He took up his duties with an
ardor that never abated. He ministered lovingly to the poor and in the
confessional devoted himself to the needs of the humblest with special
care. His style of preaching was so simple that it charmed his hearers;
scholar though he was, he refrained from filling his sermons with Greek
and Latin quotations and theological subtleties, in the prevailing
fashion.
Before long he was called on to undertake a far more
difficult task. The Chablais, a section of Savoy on the south shore of
Lake Geneva, had been invaded about sixty years earlier by militant
Protestants from Berne, who took over the western part of it as well as
the Pays de Vaud and the Pays de Gex, on the north shore of the lake.
Catholic worship was outlawed, and churches were burned or razed when not
appropriated for Protestant use. Religious orders were suppressed and
priests expelled. Thirty years later the duke of Savoy, by giving up his
claim to Vaud, had got back the Chablais and Gex, but on condition that
the Catholic religion remain forbidden. In 1589 the Protestants of Berne
again invaded the Chablais only to be repulsed, and by the Treaty of Nyon
had agreed to allow the reestablishment of Catholic worship in the
province and to restrict Protestant teaching to three towns, of which
Thonon, the capital, was not to be one. But they soon broke their
agreement and made a fresh attempt to conquer both the Chablais and Gex.
As soon as hostilities ceased, the duke appealed to the
bishop of Geneva to send Catholic missionaries into the district. The
pious ecclesiastic who undertook this mission was a timid soul who
eventually withdrew in fear of personal violence and in despair of ever
achieving success. The bishop now summoned his canons and put the
situation before them, disguising none of the difficulties. When the
bishop had concluded, Francis stood up to offer himself, saying simply,
"Monseigneur, if you think I am capable, tell me to go. I am ready,
and should rejoice to be chosen." To his delight, the bishop accepted
Francis at once. Monsieur de Boisy tried to stop his son, but nothing
could shake Francis' resolution. He departed without his father's
blessing.
Traveling on foot with little money, Francis,
accompanied by his cousin, Canon Louis de Sales, set out in September of
1594 to win the Chablais back to its ancient faith. The Chateau des
Allinges, six or seven miles from Thonon, was a Catholic stronghold where
the governor of the province was stationed with a garrison of soldiers,
and to this fortress the two cousins were to return each night for the
sake of safety. At Thonon, the Catholic population of the city had been
reduced to about twenty persons, who were too intimidated to declare
themselves openly. Francis sought them out one by one for private
interviews and inspired them with renewed courage. He and his cousin
gradually extended their efforts to the villages of the surrounding
countryside.
The long walk night and morning to and from Allinges was
a heavy tax on their strength and during the winter it exposed them to
real dangers. Once Francis was set upon by wolves and only escaped by
spending the night in a tree. When daylight came he was discovered by some
peasants in such an exhausted condition that had they not helped him to
reach their hut and revived him with food and warmth, he would have died.
These good people were Calvinists. With his thanks Francis spoke words of
enlightenment and charity and his rescuers were later restored to the
faith. Twice in January, 1595, he was waylaid by Protestant fanatics who
had sworn to take his life. On both occasions he was saved, seemingly, by
a miracle.
Although at first the missionaries had little reward for
their labors, they did not lose heart. Francis continually sought new ways
to reach the minds of the people. He began to write brief leaflets,
setting forth the leading dogmas of the Church as opposed to the tenets of
Calvinism. These little papers, on which he worked in spare moments, were
copied and recopied by hand and widely distributed. Later they were
collected and printed in a volume called Controversies. Copies of
these leaflets in the original written form are still preserved in the
convent at Annecy.
To this work Francis added the spiritual direction of
the soldiers quartered in the Chateau des Allinges, who, though nominally
Catholic, were ignorant and dissolute. He instructed them and persuaded
many to reform their lives. In the summer of 1595 he climbed the mountain
of Voiron to restore an oratory to the Blessed Virgin which had been
destroyed by the Bernese. On the way he was attacked by a hostile crowd,
who beat him and drove him back. Soon after this his sermons at Thonon
were drawing larger congregations. The little tracts or leaflets,
scattered abroad, proved quietly effective, and in time there was a stream
of lapsed Catholics asking for reconciliation with their Church.
Francis now went to live openly at Thonon. Oblivious of
calumny and danger, he preached in the market place and held public
disputations with leading Calvinist ministers of the district. Later on he
was commissioned by Pope Clement VIII to debate with Theodore Beza, a
distinguished Calvinist scholar. Francis was not able to bring Beza back
into the Church, but many Protestants were convinced that Francis had the
truth on his side. When, after three or four years, Bishop de Granier came
to visit the mission, the results of Francis' untiring zeal were plain to
see. Catholic faith and worship had been reestablished in the province,
and by 1598 the whole district was once more predominantly Catholic.
Francis was very tender in his reception of sinners and
apostates who had returned to the faith. He would greet them with the
warmth of a father, saying, "Come, my dear children, come, let me put
my arms around you. Ah, let me hide you in the bottom of my heart! God and
I will help you, all I ask of you is not to despair; I will take on myself
the rest of the burden." His affectionate care of them extended even
to their bodily wants, and his purse was open to them as well as his
heart. When told that his generosity would only encourage sinners, he
replied: "Has not our Blessed Lord shed His blood for them, and shall
I refuse them my tears? These wolves will be changed into lambs; a day
will come when, cleansed of their sins, they will be more precious in the
sight of God than we are. If Saul had been cast off, we should never have
had St. Paul."
The bishop had long been considering Francis as a
coadjutor and successor, but Francis declined the honor, thinking himself
unworthy. In the end he yielded. No sooner was his decision made than he
fell dangerously ill with a fever. When he had regained his strength, he
started for Rome, accompanied by the Abbe de Chisse, who was to handle
diocesan matters and arrange for the coadjutorship. At Rome Cardinal de
Medici presented Francis to Pope Clement VIII. Having heard much praise of
the young provost, the Pope suggested that he be examined in his presence.
On the appointed day there was an assemblage of learned theologians,
including the Church historian Baronius, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, and
Cardinal Federigo Borromeo. They put to Francis thirty-five questions on
points of theology. He answered all of them simply and modestly, yet in a
way that demonstrated his profound understanding. The Pope declared
himself completely satisfied, and embraced and congratulated the
candidate. Francis' appointment as coadjutor for the diocese of Geneva was
confirmed, and he returned to take up his local work with fresh energy.
The following year, his father, aged seventy-nine, died at the Chateau de
Sales, comforted during his last hours by his eldest son.
Early in 1602 Bishop de Granier sent Francis to Paris to
negotiate with King Henry IV[1] on behalf of the French section of the
diocese of Geneva. During his stay he was invited to preach a course of
sermons in the Chapel Royal, which soon proved too small to hold the
crowds that came to listen to his uncompromising words of truth. He was in
high favor with King Henry, who said of him, "Monseigneur de Geneve
has every virtue and not a fault." The King offered many inducements
to Francis to remain in France, and renewed his persuasions when Francis
was again in Paris some years later. But the young bishop would not
forsake "my poor bride," as he called his mountain diocese.
On the death of Bishop de Granier in the autumn of 1602,
he succeeded to the see of Geneva and took up residence at Annecy, living
in a style appropriate to the office but with a household conducted on
lines of strict economy. His personal life was one of evangelical poverty.
He fulfilled his episcopal duties with devotion and along with the
administrative work continued to preach and serve in the confessional. He
instituted the teaching of the Catechism throughout his diocese, and at
Annecy gave the instruction himself with such fervor that years after his
death the "Bishop's Catechisms" were still remembered. Children
loved him and followed him about, eager for his blessing.
Through an immense correspondence he brought
encouragement and guidance to innumerable persons. For sixteen years a
sharer in his work was Jeanne Francoise Fremyot (St. Jane Frances de
Chantal), with whom he became acquainted in 1604, while he was preaching
at Dijon. The baroness of Chantal was only twenty-four when, after the
death of her husband, she decided to enter the religious life. One result
of her meeting with Francis was the foundation, in 1610, of the Order of
the Visitation, to meet the needs of widows and lonely women in poor
health, "strong souls with weak bodies," who were deterred from
joining other orders because of their physical condition. Some of St.
Francis' best thought is to be found in the letters he wrote to this great
woman, who was herself canonized in 1767. What is perhaps his most famous
book, the Introduction to the Devout Life, grew out of a series of
casual letters written to another woman, a cousin by marriage, Madame de
Chamoisy, who had placed herself under his guidance. This little
collection of short practical lessons on true piety and everyday living
was published in 1608. It was soon translated into many languages, and has
continued to find readers.
In 1610 came the heavy sorrow of Madame de Boisy's
death. Francis was to survive his mother by twelve years-probably the most
laborious of his life. His young brother, Jean-Francois de Sales, was
consecrated bishop in 1621 and appointed coadjutor in the diocese of
Geneva. His help was welcome to Francis, whose health was failing under
the ever-increasing duties. The following year the duke of Savoy,
traveling in state to meet King Louis XIII in Languedoc, invited the good
bishop of Geneva to join him. Anxious to obtain from Louis certain
religious privileges for the French part of his diocese, Francis accepted,
although the journey promised to be chilly and uncomfortable. Before
leaving Annecy he set his affairs in order, as if he had no expectation of
returning. On his arrival at Avignon, he avoided the pomp and
entertainments of the brilliant court gathered there, and tried to lead
his customary austere life. But the famous bishop was much sought after;
people wanted to see him and to hear him preach.
He was worn out, therefore, when he stopped at Lyons on
his return. The convent of the Visitation provided him with a cottage on
their grounds, where he stayed for a month. He spared himself no labor,
giving the nuns instruction and advice, and continuing his preaching and
ministrations through Christmas. On December 27 he had a paralytic
seizure. He recovered speech and consciousness, and after receiving the
Last Sacraments, he murmured words of Scripture, expressing all confidence
in God's mercy. On December 28, while those kneeling about his bed recited
the litany for the dying, he breathed his last. He was fifty-six, and in
the twentieth year of his episcopacy. In his Treatise on the Love of
God, Francis had written, "The measure of love is to love without
measure," a precept which he had consistently taught and lived.
His body was embalmed and brought, all save the heart,
to Annecy. It remained in a tomb near the high altar in the church of the
first convent of the Visitation until the French Revolution, when it was
removed for fear of desecration. Since then it has been restored to the
church of the reconstructed convent at Annecy. Francis was beatified by
Alexander VII in 1661, canonized by him in 1665, and proclaimed a Doctor
of the Church during the pontificate of Pope Pius IX, in 1877. His heart
was preserved in the church of the Visitation at Lyons, in a golden shrine
given by Louis XIII.
SAINT GREGORY the GREAT
Pope, Doctor of the Church –
AD 604 (March 12)
Because of the general breakdown of civil institutions
resulting from the great migrations, the Church assumed an important role
in the secular life of sixth-century Italy, particularly during the
pontificate of Pope Gregory I, called "The Great." It may be
useful to dwell briefly on the historical events of the period preceding
Gregory's birth. The line of Western emperors had ended in 476, after
which Italy was under the German Odoacer, who, at the head of a barbarian
army, ruled from Ravenna, subject to the Eastern emperors at
Constantinople. Another barbarian, the Ostrogoth Theodoric, at the bidding
of the Emperor Zeno, overran Italy, captured Rome, and, in 493, Ravenna
also. Theodoric installed himself in this city, and from there dominated
the rest of Italy as vice-emperor. After his death in 526, Emperor
Justinian, bent on reconquering the West, sent Greek armies under
Belisarius. He first retook North Africa from the Vandals, who had
captured it in St. Augustine's time, and then gained possession of Italy.
During this Italian war, which lasted from 535 to 553, Gregory was born,
about the year 540, of one of the few patrician families left in Rome. As
a boy he went through the horrors of a siege when Romans were reduced to
eating grass and nettles. At this time, according to the historian
Procopius, only five hundred persons remained alive in the city The Goths
now advanced into Italy under a strong leader, Totila, who forced the
sending of new armies from the East. During these years cities were taken
and retaken, the farmlands were laid waste, and the people suffered from
pestilence, famine, and looting.
The war was at length ended by Belisarius' successor,
Narses, and Italy was again subject to the Emperor, and ruled from Ravenna
by an exarch. In addition to their other sufferings, the people were now
preyed upon by tax-gatherers, who extorted all they could, with the right
of retaining one-twelfth of whatever they collected. Rome, once the proud
mistress of the world, was in a lamentable state throughout Gregory's
lifetime. Repeatedly besieged and sacked, the city was in ruins; the once
fertile hinterland was almost a wilderness. No civil authority was left
capable of dealing with the problems created by war and pillage, and to
these recurrent evils were added fire, flood, and plague. The destruction
of fine old buildings for the sake of their materials was so common that
modern archeologists have found no structures erected later than the
fourth century which were put up with newly quarried stone.
Gregory's family, famed for its piety, had given two
sixth-century popes to the Church. His father, Gordianus, a government
official, was a wealthy man, the owner of great estates in Sicily and a
fine house on the Coelian Hill; his mother, Sylvia, was later venerated as
a saint. Gregory early gave evidence of a brilliant mind and had the best
education obtainable. He studied law and prepared to follow his father
into public life. Rising steadily in government service, at the age of
thirty he was appointed prefect of Rome. In this office, which he filled
capably, the importance of law, order, and respect for constituted
authority was impressed upon him. These lessons he was soon to apply in
the ecclesiastical sphere, for within the year Gregory had abandoned his
career to devote himself to the service of God. He went first to Sicily,
where he founded six monasteries; then returning to Rome, he made his own
home into a Benedictine monastery under the patronage of St. Andrew. By
this time his father was dead, and his mother had gone to live at Cella
Nova, a conventual retreat outside the city. After giving the remainder of
his extensive property to charity, Gregory settled at St. Andrew's, as one
of the monks.
He was afflicted now and throughout most of his life by
gastric disorders, probably brought on by excessive fasting. Still, the
three or four years he spent in the cloister were relatively happy, and it
was with regret that he received from Pope Pelagius II an appointment as
deacon, which meant a more active life in the world. Rome was under siege
by the Lombards, and the Pope decided to send an embassy to
Constantinople, to congratulate the new Emperor Tiberias II on his
accession and to beg for military aid for the city. Gregory was to
accompany this embassy, bearing the title of apocrisiarsus, or
papal ambassador.
Gregory found his position most uncongenial. There was a
great contrast between the magnificence of Constantinople and the miseries
of Rome. To avoid the intrigues and elaborate etiquette of the court,
Gregory passed much of his time in seclusion, writing a commentary on the
Book of Job. The embassy itself was a failure; the Emperor claimed that he
could render no aid since his armies were busy keeping off the Persians
and other enemies. After six years, Gregory was recalled and he settled
down in St. Andrew's, where they elected him abbot.
One day, the story goes, Gregory was walking through the
Roman slave market when he noticed three fair, golden-haired boys. He
asked their nationality and was told that they were Angles. "They are
well named," said Gregory, "for they have angelic faces."
He asked where they came from, and when told "De Ire," h |