<h1>XVI <br/> FRANCIS THE SAINT—THE FATHER OF THE RENAISSANCE.</h1>
<p>The Renaissance is often thought of as a movement which originated
about the middle of the Fifteenth Century. Careful students sometimes
trace its origin back somewhat further. In recent years it has come to
be realized, however, that the great intellectual development which
came during the century after the fall of Constantinople in Italy, and
gradually spread to all the civilized countries of Europe, had been
preparing for at least two centuries and a half. While the period from
the middle of the Fifteenth to the end of the Sixteenth Centuries well
deserves the name of Renaissance, because one of the most important
fructifying principles of the movement was the rebirth of Greek ideas
into the modern world after the dispersion of Greek scholars by the
Turkish advance into the Byzantine Empire, the term must not be
allowed to carry with it the mistaken notion which only too often has
been plausibly accepted, that there was a new birth of poetic,
literary and esthetic ideas at this time, just as if there had been
nothing worth considering in these lines before. Any such notion as
this would be the height of absurdity in the light of the history of
the previous centuries in Italy. It was a cherished notion of the
people of the Renaissance themselves that they were the first to do
artistic and literary work, hence they invented the term Gothic,
meaning thereby barbarous, for the art of the preceding time, but in
this they were only exercising that amusing, self-complacency which
each generation deems its right. Succeeding generations adopting their
depreciative term have turned it into one of glory so that Gothic art
is now in highest honor.</p>
<p>Fortunately in recent years there has come, as we have said, a growing
recognition of the fact that the real beginning of modern art lies
much farther back in history, and that the real father of the
Italian Renaissance is a man whom very few people in the last three
centuries have appreciated at his true worth. Undoubtedly the leader
in that great return to nature, which constitutes the true basis of
modern poetic and artistic ideas of all kinds, was St. Francis of
Assisi. "The poor little man of God," as in his humility he loved to
call himself, would surely be the last one to suspect that he should
ever come to be thought of as the initiator of a great movement in
literature and art. Such he was, however, in the highest sense of the
term and because of the modern appreciation of him in this regard,
publications concerning him have been more frequent during the last
ten years than with regard to almost any other single individual. We
have under our hand at the present moment what by no means claims to
be a complete bibliography of St. Francis' life and work, yet we can
count no less than thirty different works in various languages (not
reckoning translations separate from the originals) which have issued
from the press during the last ten years alone. This gives some idea
of present day interest in St. Francis.</p>
<p>It must not be thought, however, that it is only in our time that
these significant tributes have been paid him. Much of his influence
in literature and art, as well as in life, was recognized by the
southern nations all during the centuries since his death. That it is
only during the last century that other nations have come to
appreciate him better, and especially have realized his literary
significance, has been their loss and that of their literatures. At
the beginning of the Nineteenth Century Görres, the German historian
who was so sympathetic towards the Middle Ages, wrote of St. Francis
as one of the Troubadours, and even did not hesitate to add that
without St. Francis at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century there
would have been no Dante at the end. Renan, the well-known French
rationalist historian and literateur, did not hesitate to proclaim St.
Francis one of the great religious poets of all time and his famous
Canticle of the Sun as the greatest religious poem since the Hebrew
Psalms were written. It was from Renan that Matthew Arnold received
his introduction to St. Francis as a literary man, and his own studies
led him to write the famous passages in the Essays in Criticism, which
are usually so much a source of surprise to
those who think of Mr. Arnold as the rationalizing critic, rather than
the sympathetic admirer of a medieval saint.</p>
<p class="cite">
"In the beginning of the Thirteenth Century, when the clouds and
storms had come, when the gay sensuous pagan life was gone, when men
were not living by the senses and understanding, when they were
looking for the speedy coming of Antichrist, there appeared in
Italy, to the north of Rome, in the beautiful Umbrian country at the
foot of the Appennines, a figure of the most magical power and
charm, St. Francis. His century is, I think, the most interesting in
the history of Christianity after its primitive age; more
interesting than even the century of the Reformation; and one of the
chief figures, perhaps the very chief, to which this interest
attaches itself, is St. Francis. And why? Because of the profound
popular instinct which enabled him, more than any man since the
primitive age, to fit religion for popular use. He brought religion
to the people. He founded the most popular body of ministers of
religion that has ever existed in the Church. He transformed
monachism by uprooting the stationary monk, delivering him from the
bondage of property, and sending him, as a mendicant friar, to be a
stranger and sojourner, not in the wilderness, but in the most
crowded haunts of men, to console them and to do them good. This
popular instinct of his is at the bottom of his famous marriage with
poverty. Poverty and suffering are the condition of the people, the
multitude, the immense majority of mankind; and it was towards this
people that his soul yearned. "He listens," it was said of him, "to
those to whom God himself will not listen."</p>
<p>Matthew Arnold has thus surprisingly summed up Francis' age and his
work. With a sympathy that could scarcely be expected from the man for
whom the Deity had become merely "a stream of tendency that makes for
righteousness," he realized the influence that this supreme lover of a
personal God had over his generation, and his brother poet soul flew
to its affinity in spite of the apparently insurmountable obstacle of'
extreme aloofness of spiritual temperament.</p>
<SPAN name="opp256">{opp256}</SPAN>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i_opp256.jpg" border=1><br/>
THE GLORIFICATION OF ST. FRANCIS (GIOTTO, LOWER CHURCH OF ASSISI)</p>
<p>Matthew Arnold proceeds:</p>
<p class="cite">
"So in return, as no other man, St. Francis was listened to. When an
Umbrian town or village heard of his approach, the whole
population went out in joyful procession to meet him, with green
boughs, flags, music, and songs of gladness. The master, who began
with two disciples, could in his own lifetime (and he died at
forty-five) collect to keep Whitsuntide with him, in presence of an
immense multitude, five thousand of his Minorites. He found
fulfilment to his prophetic cry: "I hear in my ears the sound of the
tongues of all the nations who shall come unto us; Frenchmen,
Spaniards, Germans, Englishmen. The Lord will make of us a great
people, even unto the ends of the earth."</p>
<p>When we reach the next paragraph the secret of this surprising
paradoxical sympathy is out. It is the literary and esthetic side of
St. Francis that has appealed to him, and like Renan he does not
hesitate to give "the poor little man of God" a place among the great
original geniuses of all time, associating his name with that of
Dante.</p>
<p class="cite">
"Prose could not satisfy this ardent soul, and he made poetry. Latin
was too learned for this simple, popular nature, and he composed in
his mother tongue, in Italian. The beginnings of the mundane poetry
of the Italians are in Sicily, at the court of kings; the beginnings
of their religious poetry are in Umbria, with St. Francis. His are
the humble upper waters of a mighty stream: at the beginning of the
Thirteenth Century, it is St. Francis, at the end, Dante. Now it
happens that St. Francis, too, like the Alexandrian songstress, has
his hymn for the sun, for Adonis; Canticle of the Sun, Canticle of
the Creatures, the poem goes by both names. Like the Alexandrian
hymn, it is designed for popular use, but not for use by King
Ptolemy's people; artless in language, irregular in rhythm, it
matches with the childlike genius that produced it, and the simple
natures that loved and repeated it."</p>
<p>Probably the most satisfactory translation for those who may not be
able to appreciate the original of this sublime hymn that has evoked
so many tributes, is the following literal rendering into English in
which a quite successful attempt to give the naif rhythm of the
original Italian, which necessarily disappears in any formal rhymed
translation, has been made by Father Paschal Robinson of the Order of
St. Francis for his recent edition of the writings of St. Francis.
[Footnote 23]</p>
<p class="footnote">
[Footnote 23: Philadelphia, The Dolphin Press, 1906.]</p>
<p>"Here begin the praises of the Creatures which the Blessed Francis
made to the praise and honor of God while he was ill at St. Damian's:</p>
<p>Most high, omnipotent, good Lord,<br/>
Praise, glory and honor and benediction all, are Thine.<br/>
To Thee alone do they belong, most High,<br/>
And there is no man fit to mention Thee.<br/>
Praise be to Thee, my Lord, with all Thy creatures.<br/>
Especially to my worshipful brother sun,<br/>
The which lights up the day, and through him dost Thou brightness give;<br/>
And beautiful is he and radiant with splendor great;<br/>
Of Thee, Most High, signification gives.<br/>
Praised be my Lord, for sister moon and for the stars,<br/>
In heaven Thou hast formed them clear and precious and fair.<br/>
Praised be my Lord for brother wind<br/>
And for the air and clouds and fair and every kind of weather.<br/>
By the which Thou givest to Thy creatures nourishment.<br/>
Praised be my Lord for sister water,<br/>
The which is greatly helpful and humble and precious and pure.<br/>
Praised be my Lord for brother fire,<br/>
By the which Thou lightest up the dark.<br/>
And fair is he and gay and mighty and strong.<br/>
Praised be my Lord for our sister, mother earth.<br/>
The which sustains and keeps us<br/>
And brings forth diverse fruits with grass and flowers bright.<br/>
Praised be my Lord for those who for Thy love forgive<br/>
And weakness bear and tribulation.<br/>
Blessed those who shall in peace endure,<br/>
For by Thee, Most High, shall they be crowned.<br/>
Praised be my Lord for our sister, the bodily death.<br/>
From the which no living man can flee.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
Woe to them who die in mortal sin;<br/>
Blessed those who shall find themselves in Thy most holy will,<br/>
For the second death shall do them no ill.<br/>
Praise ye and bless ye my Lord, and give Him thanks,<br/>
And be subject unto Him with great humility."<br/></p>
<p>Except for his place in literature and art, the lives of few men would
seem to be of so little interest to the modern time as that of St.
Francis of Assisi, yet it is for the man himself that so many now turn
to him. His spirit is entirely opposed to the sordid principles that
have been accepted as the basis of success in modern life. His idea
was that happiness consisted in being free from unsatisfied desires
rather than seeking to secure the satisfaction of his wishes. Duty was
self-denial, not self-seeking under any pretext. He stripped himself
literally of everything and his mystic marriage to the Lady Poverty
was, so far as he was concerned, as absolute a reality, as if the
union had been actual instead of imaginary. The commonplace details of
his early years seem all the more interesting from these later
developments, and have been the subject of much sympathetic study in
recent years.</p>
<p>St. Francis' father was a cloth merchant and St. Francis had been
brought up and educated as became the son of a man whose commercial
journeys often took him to France. It was indeed while his father was
absent on one of these business expeditions that Francis was born and
on his father's return received from him the name of Francisco—the
Frenchman—in joyful commemoration of his birth.</p>
<p>As he grew up he did not differ from the ordinary young man of his
time, but seems to have taken the world and its pleasures quite as he
found them and after the fashion of those around him. At the age of
twenty-five he fell seriously ill and then, for the first time, there
came to him the realization of the true significance of life. As Dean
Stanley said shortly before his death, "life seemed different when
viewed from the horizontal position." Life lived for its own sake was
not worth while. To Francis there came the realization that when God
Himself became man he lived his life for others. Francis set
about literally imitating him. Enthusiastic students of his life
consider him the great type of genuine Christian, the most real
disciple of Christ who ever lived. Some money and goods that came into
his hands having been disposed of for the poor, Francis' father made
serious objection and Francis was brought before the ecclesiastical
authorities. It was at this moment that he stripped himself of
everything that he had, the Bishop even having to provide a cloak to
cover his nakedness, and became the wonderful apostle to the poor that
he remained during all the rest of his life. Curious as it must ever
seem, it was not long before he had many who wished to imitate him and
who insisted on becoming his disciples and followers. St. Francis had
had no idea how infectious his example was to prove. Before his death
his disciples could be numbered by the thousands and the great order
of the Franciscans, that for centuries was to do so much work, had
come into existence not by any conscious planning, but by the mere
force of the great Christian principles that were the guiding factors
in St. Francis' own life.</p>
<p>Ruskin in his Mornings in Florence in discussing Giotto's famous
picture of St. Francis' renunciation of his inheritance, and his
incurrence thereby of his father's anger, has a characteristic passage
that sounds the very keynote of the Saint's life and goes to the heart
of things. In it he explains the meaning of this apparently
contradictory incident in St. Francis' life, since Francis' great
virtue was obedience, yet here, apparently as a beginning of his more
perfect Christian life, is an act of disobedience. After Ruskin's
explanation, however, it is all the more difficult to understand the
present generation's revival of interest in Francis unless it be
attributed to a liking for contrast.</p>
<p class="cite">
"That is the meaning of St. Francis' renouncing his inheritance; and
it is the beginning of Giotto's gospel of Works. Unless this hardest
of deeds be done first—this inheritance of mammon and the world
cast away,—all other deeds are useless. You cannot serve, cannot
obey, God and mammon. No charities, no obedience, no self-denials,
are of any use while you are still at heart in conformity with the
world. You go to church, because the world goes. You keep Sunday,
because your neighbor keeps it. But you dress ridiculously
because your neighbors ask it; and you dare not do a rough piece of
work, because your neighbors despise it. You must renounce your
neighbor, in his riches and pride, and remember him in his distress.
That is St. Francis' 'disobedience.'"</p>
<SPAN name="opp261">{opp261}</SPAN>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i_opp261.jpg" border=1><br/>
ST. FRANCIS (CHURCH OF THE FRARI, VENICE, NIC. PISANO)</p>
<p>In spite of Ruskin's charming explanation of St. Francis' place in
history, and his elucidation of the hard passages in his life, most
people will only find it more difficult, after these explanations, to
understand the modern acute reawakening of interest in St. Francis.
Our generation in its ardent devotion to the things of this world does
not seem a promising field for the evangel, "Give up all thou hast and
follow me." The mystery of St. Francis' attraction only deepens the
more we know of him. An American Franciscan has tried to solve the
problem and his words are worth quoting. Father Paschal Robinson, O.
S. M., in his "The True St. Francis" says:—</p>
<p class="cite">
"What is the cause of the present widespread homage to St. Francis?
It is, of course, far too wide a question to allow the present
writer to do more than make a few suggestions. First and foremost,
we must ever reckon with the perennial charm of the Saint's
personality, which seems to wield an ineffable influence over the
hearts of men—drawing and holding those of the most different
habits of mind, with a sense of personal sympathy. Perhaps no other
man, unless it be St. Paul, ever had such wide reaching,
all-embracing sympathy: and it may have been wider than St. Paul's,
for we find no evidence in the great apostle of a love for nature
and of animals. This exquisite Franciscan spirit, as it is called,
which is the very perfume of religion—this spirit at once so
humble, so tender, so devout, so akin to 'the good odor of
Christ'—passed out into the whole world and has become a permanent
source of inspiration. A character at once so exhalted and so
purified as St. Francis was sure to keep alive an ideal; and so he
does. From this one can easily understand St. Francis' dominance
among a small but earnest band of enthusiasts now pointing the world
back to the reign of the spirit. It was this same gentle idealism of
St. Francis which inspired the art of the Umbrian people; it was
this which was translated into the paintings of the greatest
artists. No school of painting has ever been penetrated with
such pure idealism as the Umbrian; and this inspiration, at once
religious and artistic, came from the tomb of the <i>poverello</i> above
which Giotto had painted his mystical frescoes. The earnest
quasi-religious study of the medieval beginnings of western art has
therefore rightly been set down as another cause for some of the
latter-day pilgrimages to Assisi. In like manner, the scientific
treatment of the Romance literature leads naturally to St. Francis
as to the humble upper waters of a mighty stream; at the beginning
of the Thirteenth Century is St. Francis, at the end is Dante. It
was Matthew Arnold, we believe, who first held up the poor man of
Assisi as a literary type—a type as distinct and formal as the
author of the <i>Divine Comedy</i>. 'Prose,' he says, 'could not easily
satisfy the saint's ardent soul, and so he made poetry.' 'It was,'
writes Ozanam, 'the first cry of a nascent poetry which has grown
and made itself heard through the world.'"</p>
<p>Considering how thoroughly impractical Francis seemed to be in his
life, it can scarcely help but be a source of ever increasing wonder
that he succeeded in influencing, his generation so widely and so
thoroughly. It is evident that there were many men of the time tired
of the more or less strenuous life, which chained them either to the
cares of business or tempted them for the sake of the bubble
reputation into a military career. To these St. Francis' method of
life came with an especially strong appeal. The example of his neglect
of worldly things and of his so thoroughly maintained resolve not to
be harassed by the ordinary cares of life, and especially not to take
too much thought of the future, penetrated into all classes. While it
made the rich realize how much of their lives they were living merely
for the sake of others, it helped the poor to be satisfied, since here
was a sublime and complete recognition of the fact that an existence
without cares was better than one with many cares, such as were sure
to come to those who wrought ever and anon increase of the goods of
this world. Such ideas may seen to be essentially modern, but anyone
who will turn to the chapter on The Three Most Read Books of the
Century and read the passages from the "Romance of the Rose" on wealth
and poverty, will know better than to think them anything but
perennial.</p>
<p>Men gathered around St. Francis then and pleaded to be allowed to
follow his mode of life. Some of the men who thus came to him were the
choice spirits of the times. Thomas of Celano, who was to be one of
the Master's favorite disciples and subsequently to be his most
authoritative biographer, was one of the great literary geniuses of
all times, the author of the sublime Dies Irae. While most of his
first companions were men of such extreme simplicity of mind that the
world has been rather in an amused than admiring attitude with regard
to them, there can be no doubt that this simplicity was of itself an
index not only of their genuine sincerity of heart, but of a greatness
of mind that set them above the ordinary run of mankind and made them
live poetry when they did not write it. The institute established by
St. Francis was destined, in the course of the century, to attract to
it some of the great men of every country. Besides Thomas of Celano
there was, in Italy, Anthony of Padua, almost as famous as his master
for the beauty of his saintly life; Jacopone Da Todi, the well-known
author of the Stabat Mater, a hymn that rivals in poetic genius, the
Dies Irae; Bonaventure, the great teacher of philosophy and theology
at the University of Paris, and the writer of some of the sublimest
treatises of mystical theology that were to be text books for the
members of the Franciscan order, and of many other religious bodies
for centuries after his death, indeed down to even our own times.
There was Roger Bacon, in England, the famous teacher of science at
Paris and at Oxford; and that Subtle Doctor, Duns Scotus, whose
influence in philosophical speculation was destined never quite to
disappear, and many others, the pick of the generations in which they
lived, all proud to look up to Francis of Assisi as their father; all
glad of the opportunity that the order gave them, to pass their lives
in peace, far from the madding crowd with its strifes and competition,
providing them constantly with opportunities to live their own lives,
to find their own souls, to cultivate their own individualities
untrammelled by worldly cares.</p>
<p>Francis' success in this matter and the propaganda of his influence
will not be so surprising to Americans of this generation, if they
will only recall what is still a precious memory in the minds of
men who are yet alive, that efforts to found a community not unlike
that of the Franciscans in certain ways, attracted widespread
attention even in our own country half a century ago. After all, the
men who gathered at Brook Farm had ideas and ideals not so distant
from those cherished by St. Francis and the early members of the
Franciscan Order. Their main effort was also to get away from worldly
cares and have the opportunity to work out their philosophy of life
far from the disturbing influence of city life, in the peaceful
pursuit of only such agricultural efforts as might be necessary to
ensure them simple sustenance, yet at the same time enforce from them
such exercise in the open air as would guarantee the preservation of
health. The men of Brook Farm were, in the eyes of their generation,
quite as far from practical ideas as were the early Franciscans. It
must not be forgotten, however, that these men who thus attempted in
the Nineteenth Century what St. Francis succeeded in accomplishing in
the Thirteenth, in their subsequent careers succeeded in impressing
themselves very strongly upon the life of the American people. Much of
what is best in our Nineteenth Century life would be lost if the Brook
farmers and what they accomplished were to be removed from it. Men of
ideals are usually also men of working ideas, as these two experiences
in history would seem to show.</p>
<SPAN name="opp264">{opp264}</SPAN>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i_opp264a.jpg" border=1><br/>
ST. ELIZABETH—THREE FRANCISCANS (GIOTTO)</p>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i_opp264b.jpg" border=1><br/>
ST. LOUIS—THREE FRANCISCANS (GIOTTO)</p>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i_opp264c.jpg" border=1><br/>
ST. CLARE—THREE FRANCISCANS (GIOTTO)</p>
<p>It was not alone for the men of his generation, however, that Francis
was destined to furnish a refuge from worldly care and a place of
peace and thoughtful life. We have already said that it was by chance,
certainly without any conscious intention on Francis' part that the
Franciscan order for men which is usually spoken of as the First Order
came into existence. The last thing in the world very probably that
would ever have entered into the mind of Francis when he began to lead
the simple life of a poor little man of God, was the founding of a
religious order for women. We tell elsewhere the story, of St. Clare's
interest in St. Francis' mode of life and of the trials that she
underwent in order to obtain permission and opportunity to fashion her
own life in the same way. The problem was even more serious for women
than for men. St. Francis considered that they should not be
allowed to follow the Franciscan custom of going out to seek alms and
yet required that they should live in absolute poverty, possessing
nothing and supporting themselves only by the contributions of the
faithful and the work of their hands. St. Clare attempted the
apparently impossible and solved the problem of a new career for the
women of her time.</p>
<p>It was not very long before St. Clare's example proved as infective as
that of St. Francis himself. While in the beginning the members of her
family had been the most strenuous objectors against her taking up
such an unwonted mode of existence it was not long before she was
joined in the monastery of St. Damian where her little community was
living, by her sister who was to become almost as famous as herself
under the name of St. Agnes, and by her mother and other near
relatives, from Assisi and the neighborhood. This Second Order of St.
Francis to which only women were admitted proved to have in it the
germ of as active life as that of the first order. Before the end of
the Thirteenth Century there were women Franciscans in every country
in Europe. These convents furnished for women a refuge from the
worried, hurried, over-busy life around them that proved quite as
attractive as the similar opportunity for the men. For many hundreds
of years down even to our own time, women were to find in the quiet
obscurity of such Franciscan convents a peaceful, happy life in which
they occupied themselves with simple conventual duties, with manual
labor in their monastery gardens, with the making of needle work in
which they became the most expert in the world, with the illuminating
of missals and office books of such artistic beauty that they have
become the most precious treasures of our great libraries, and with
the long hours of prayer by which they hoped to accomplish as much in
making the world better as if they devoted themselves to ardent
efforts of reform which, of course, the circumstances of the time
would not have permitted.</p>
<p>Finally there was the Third Order of St. Francis, which was to gather
to itself so many of the distinguished people of the century whose
occupations and obligations would not permit them to live the
conventual life, but who yet felt that they must be attached by some
bond to this beautiful sanctity that was entering into all the
better life of the century. The Third Order was established so as to
permit all the world to become Franciscans to whatever degree it
considered possible, and to share in the sublime Christianity of the
founder whom they all admired so much, even if they were not able to
imitate his sublimer virtues. Into this Third Order of St. Francis
most of the finer spirits of the time entered with enthusiasm. We need
only recall that Louis IX. of France, the greatest Monarch of the
century, considered it a special privilege to be a follower of the
humble Francis, and that St. Elizabeth of Hungary, the daughter of a
king, the wife and mother of a ruling prince, gave another example of
the far-reachingness of Francis' work. Dante was another of the great
members of the Third Order and was buried in the habit of St. Francis,
glorying in the thought of the brotherhood this gave him with the
saint he loved so much.</p>
<p>All down the centuries since, other distinguished men in many
countries of Europe were proud to claim the same distinction. Modern
science is supposed to be unorthodox in its tendencies and electricity
is the most recent of the sciences in development. Three of the great
founders in electricity, Volta, Galvani and Ampere, were members of
the Third Order of St. Francis and at least one of them, Galvani,
insisted on being buried in the habit of the order six centuries after
the death of his father Francis in order to show how much he
appreciated the privilege. There is no man who lived in the Thirteenth
Century who influenced the better side of men more in all the
succeeding ages down to and including our own time, than the poor
little man of God of Assisi. He is just coming into a further precious
heritage of uplift for the men of our time, that is surprising for
those who are so buried in the merely material that they fail to
realize how much the ideal still rules the minds of thinking men, but
that seems only natural and inevitable to those who appreciate all the
attractiveness there is in a simple life lived without the bootless
hurry, the unattaining bustle and the over-strained excitement of the
strenuous existence.</p>
<p>What St. Francis and his order accomplished in Italy another great
Saint, Dominic, was achieving in the West. The fact that another
order similar to that of St. Francis in many respects, yet differing
from it in a number of essential particulars, should have arisen
almost at the same time shows how profoundly the spirit of
organization of effort had penetrated into the minds of these
generations of the Thirteenth Century. While poverty was to be the
badge of St. Dominic's followers as well as those of St. Francis,
learning was to replace the simplicity which St. Francis desired for
his sons. The order of preachers began at once to give many eminent
scholars to the Church, and for three centuries there was not a single
generation that did not see as Dominicans some of the most
intellectual men of Europe. Leaders they were in philosophy, in the
development of thought, in education, and in every phase of
ecclesiastical life. The watch dogs of the Lord, (Domini Canes) they
were called, punning on their name because everwhere, they were in the
van of defense against the enemies of Christianity. That the
Thirteenth Century should have given rise to two such great religious
orders stamps it as a wonderfully fruitful period for religion as well
as for every other phrase of human development.</p>
<p>In order to understand what these great founders tried to do, the work
of these two orders must be considered together. They have never
ceased, during all the intervening seven centuries, to be the source
of great influence in the religious world. They have proven refuges
for many gentle spirits at all times and have been the homes of
learning, as well as of piety. While occasionally their privileges
have been abused, and men have taken advantage of the opportunities to
be idle and luxurious, this has happened much seldomer than the world
imagines. Not a single century has failed to show men among them whom
the world honors as Saints, and whose lives have been examples of what
can be accomplished by human nature at its best. They have been
literally schools of unselfishness, and men have learned to think less
of themselves and more of their labor by the contemplation of the
lives of these begging friars. What they did for England, the Rev.
Augustus Jessopp, a non-conformist clergyman in England, has recently
told very well, and the more one studies their history, the higher the
estimation of them; and the more one knows of them, the less
does one talk of their vices. Green in his "History of the English
People" has paid them a tribute that it is well to remember:—</p>
<p class="cite">
"To bring the world back again within the pale of the Church was the
aim of two religious orders which sprang suddenly to life at the
opening of the Thirteenth Century. The zeal of the Spaniard Dominic
was aroused at the sight of the lordly prelates who sought by fire
and sword to win the Albigensian heretics to the faith. 'Zeal,' he
cried, 'must be met by zeal, lowliness by lowliness, false sanctity
by real sanctity, preaching lies by preaching truth.' His fiery
ardor and rigid orthodoxy were seconded by the mystical piety, the
imaginative enthusiasm of Francis of Assisi. The life of Francis
falls like a stream of tender light across the darkness of the time.
In the frescoes of Giotto or the verse of Dante we see him take
Poverty for his bride. He strips himself of all: he flings his very
clothes at his father's feet, that he may be one with Nature and
God. His passionate verse claims the moon for his sister and the sun
for his brother; he calls on his brother the Wind, and his sister
the Water. His last faint cry was a 'Welcome, Sister Death.'
Strangely as the two men differed from each other, their aim was the
same, to convert the heathen, to extirpate heresy, to reconcile
knowledge with orthodoxy, to carry the Gospel to the poor. The work
was to be done by the entire reversal of the older monasticism, by
seeking personal salvation in effort for the salvation of their
fellow-men, by exchanging the solitary of the cloister for the
preacher, the monk for a friar. To force the new 'brethren' into
entire dependence on those among whom they labored the vow of
Poverty was turned into a stern reality; the 'Begging Friars' were
to subsist on the alms of the poor, they might possess neither money
nor lands, the very houses in which they lived were to be held in
trust for them by others. The tide of popular enthusiasm which
welcomed their appearance swept before it the reluctance of Rome,
the jealousy of the older orders, the opposition of the parochial
priesthood. Thousands of brethren gathered in a few years around
Francis and Dominic, and the begging preachers, clad in their coarse
frock of serge, with the girdle of rope around their waist, wandered
barefooted as missionaries over Asia, battled with heresy in
Italy and Gaul, lectured in the Universities, and preached and
toiled among the poor."</p>
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SIDE CAPITAL (LINCOLN)</p>
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