CHAPTER XVI
THE BROTHERS MINOR AND LEARNING
Autumn, 1221-December, 1223
After the chapter of 1221 the evolution of the Order hurried on with a
rapidity which nothing was strong enough to check.
The creation of the ministers was an enormous step in this direction; by
the very pressure of things the latter came to establish a residence;
those who command must have their subordinates within reach, must know
at all times where they are; the Brothers, therefore, could no longer
continue to do without convents properly so-called. This change
naturally brought about many others; up to this time they had had no
churches. Without churches the friars were only itinerant preachers, and
their purpose could not but be perfectly disinterested; they were, as
Francis had wished, the friendly auxiliaries of the clergy. With
churches it was inevitable that they should first fatally aspire to
preach in them and attract the crowd to them, then in some sort erect
them into counter parishes.[1]
The bull of March 22, 1222,[2] shows us the papacy hastening these
transformations with all its power. The pontiff accords to Brother
Francis and the other friars the privilege of celebrating the sacred
mysteries in their churches in times of interdict, on the natural
condition of not ringing the bells, of closing the door, and previously
expelling those who were excommunicated.
By an astonishing inadvertence the bull itself bears witness to its
uselessness, at least for the time in which it was given: "We accord to
you," it runs, "the permission to celebrate the sacraments in times of
interdict in your churches, _if you come to have any_." This is a new
proof that in 1222 the Order as yet had none; but it is not difficult to
see in this very document a pressing invitation to change their way of
working, and not leave this privilege to be of no avail.
Another document of the same time shows a like purpose, though
manifested in another direction. By the bull _Ex parte_ of March 29,
1222, Honorius III. laid upon the Preachers and Minors of Lisbon
conjointly a singularly delicate mission; he gave them full powers to
proceed against the bishop and clergy of that city, who exacted from the
faithful that they should leave to them by will one-third of their
property, and refused the Church's burial service to those who
disobeyed.[3]
The fact that the pope committed to the Brothers the care of choosing
what measures they should take proves how anxious they were at Rome to
forget the object for which they had been created, and to transform them
into deputies of the Holy See. It is, therefore, needless to point out
that the mention of Francis's name at the head of the former of these
bulls has no significance. We do not picture the Poverello seeking a
privilege for circumstances not yet existing! We perceive here the
influence of Ugolini,[4] who had found the Brother Minor after his own
heart in the person of Elias.
What was Francis doing all this time? We have no knowledge, but the very
absence of information, so abundant for the period that precedes as well
as for that which follows, shows plainly enough that he has quitted
Portiuncula, and gone to live in one of those Umbrian hermitages that
had always had so strong an attachment for him.[5] There is hardly a
hill in Central Italy that has not preserved some memento of him. It
would be hard to walk half a day between Florence and Rome without
coming upon some hut on a hillside bearing his name or that of one of
his disciples.
There was a time when these huts were inhabited, when in these leafy
booths Egidio, Masseo, Bernardo, Silvestro, Ginepro, and many others
whose names history has forgotten, received visits from their spiritual
father, coming to them for their consolation.[6]
They gave him love for love and consolation for consolation. His poor
heart had great need of both, for in his long, sleepless nights it had
come to him at times to hear strange voices; weariness and regret were
laying hold on him, and looking over the past he was almost driven to
doubt of himself, his Lady Poverty, and everything.
Between Chiusi and Radicofani--an hour's walk from the village of
Sartiano--a few Brothers had made a shelter which served them by way of
hermitage, with a little cabin for Francis in a retired spot. There he
passed one of the most agonizing nights of his life. The thought that he
had exaggerated the virtue of asceticism and not counted enough upon the
mercy of God assailed him, and suddenly he came to regret the use he had
made of his life. A picture of what he might have been, of the tranquil
and happy home that might have been his, rose up before him in such
living colors that he felt himself giving way. In vain he disciplined
himself with his hempen girdle until the blood came; the vision would
not depart.
It was midwinter; a heavy fall of snow covered the ground; he rushed out
without his garment, and gathering up great heaps of snow began to make
a row of images. "See," he said, "here is thy wife, and behind her are
two sons and two daughters, with the servant and the maid carrying all
the baggage."
With this child-like representation of the tyranny of material cares
which he had escaped, he finally put away the temptation.[7]
There is nothing to show whether or not we should fix at the same epoch
another incident which legend gives as taking place at Sartiano. One day
a brother of whom he asked, "Whence do you come?" replied, "From your
cell." This simple answer was enough to make the vehement lover of
Poverty refuse to occupy it again. "Foxes have holes," he loved to
repeat, "and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man had not
where to lay his head. When the Lord spent forty days and forty nights
praying and fasting in the desert, he built himself neither cell nor
house, but made the side of a rock his shelter."[8]
It would be a mistake to think, as some have done, that as time went on
Francis changed his point of view. Certain ecclesiastical writers have
assumed that since he desired the multiplication of his Order, he for
that very reason consented to its transformation. The suggestion is
specious, but in this matter we are not left to conjecture; almost
everything which was done in the Order after 1221 was done either
without Francis's knowledge or against his will. If one were inclined to
doubt this, it would need only to glance over that most solemn and also
most adequate manifesto of his thought--his Will. There he is shown
freed from all the temptations which had at times made him hesitate in
the expression of his ideas, bravely gathering himself up to summon back
the primitive ideal, and set it up in opposition to all the concessions
which had been wrung from his weakness.
The Will is not an appendix to the Rule of 1223, it is almost its
revocation. But it would be a mistake to see in it the first attempt
made to return to the early ideal. The last five years of his life were
only one incessant effort at protest, both by his example and his words.
In 1222 he addressed to the brethren of Bologna a letter filled with sad
forebodings. In that city, where the Dominicans, overwhelmed with
attentions, were occupied with making themselves a stronghold in the
system of instruction, the Brothers Minor were more than anywhere else
tempted to forsake the way of simplicity and poverty. Francis's warnings
had put on such dark and threatening colors that after the famous
earthquake of December 23, 1222, which spread terror over all northern
Italy, there was no hesitation in believing that he had predicted the
catastrophe.[9] He had indeed predicted a catastrophe which was none
the less horrible for being wholly moral, and the vision of which forced
from him the most bitter imprecations:
"Lord Jesus, thou didst choose thine apostles to the number of
twelve, and if one of them did betray thee, the others,
remaining united to thee, preached thy holy gospel, filled with
one and the same inspiration; and behold now, remembering the
former days, thou hast raised up the Religion of the Brothers in
order to uphold faith, and that by them the mystery of thy
gospel may be accomplished. Who will take their place if,
instead of fulfilling their mission and being shining examples
for all, they are seen to give themselves up to works of
darkness? Oh! may they be accursed by thee, Lord, and by all the
court of heaven, and by me, thine unworthy servant, they who by
their bad example overturn and destroy all that thou didst do in
the beginning and ceasest not to do by the holy Brothers of this
Order."[10]
This passage from Thomas of Celano, the most moderate of the
biographers, shows to what a pitch of vehemence and indignation the
gentle Francis could be worked up.
In spite of very natural efforts to throw a veil of reserve over the
anguish of the founder with regard to the future of his spiritual
family, we find traces of it at every step. "The time will come," he
said one day, "when our Order will so have lost all good renown that its
members will be ashamed to show themselves by daylight."[11]
He saw in a dream a statue with the head of pure gold, the breast and
arms of silver, the body of crystal, and the legs of iron. He thought it
was an omen of the future in store for his institute.[12]
He believed his sons to be attacked with two maladies, unfaithful at
once to poverty and humility; but perhaps he dreaded for them the demon
of learning more than the temptation of riches.
What were his views on the subject of learning? It is probable that he
never examined the question as a whole, but he had no difficulty in
seeing that there will always be students enough in the universities,
and that if scientific effort is an homage offered to God, there is no
risk of worshippers of this class being wanting; but in vain he looked
about him on all sides, he saw no one to fulfil the mission of love and
humility reserved for his Order, if the friars came to be unfaithful to
it.
Therefore there was something more in his anguish than the grief of
seeing his hopes confounded. The rout of an army is nothing in
comparison with the overthrow of an idea; and in him an idea had been
incarnated, the idea of peace and happiness restored to mankind, by the
victory of love over the trammels of material things.
By an ineffable mystery he felt himself the Man of his age, him in whose
body are borne all the efforts, the desires, the aspirations of men;
with him, in him, by him humanity yearns to be renewed, and to use the
language of the gospel, born again.
In this lies his true beauty. By this, far more than by a vain
conformity, an exterior imitation, he is a Christ.
He also bears the affliction of the world, and if we will look into the
very depths of his soul we must give this word affliction the largest
possible meaning for him as for Jesus. By their pity they bore the
physical sufferings of humanity, but their overwhelming anguish was
something far different from this, it was the birth-throes of the
divine. They suffer, because in them the Word is made flesh, and at
Gethsemane, as under the olive-trees of Greccio, they are in agony
"because their own received them not."
Yes, St. Francis forever felt the travail of the transformation taking
place in the womb of humanity, going forward to its divine destiny, and
he offered himself, a living oblation, that in him might take place the
mysterious palingenesis.
Do we now understand his pain? He was trembling for the mystery of the
gospel. There is in him something which reminds us of the tremor of life
when it stands face to face with death, something by so much the more
painful as we have here to do with moral life.
This explains how the man who would run after ruffians that he might
make disciples of them could be pitiless toward his fellow-laborers who
by an indiscreet, however well-intentioned, zeal forgot their vocation
and would transform their Order into a scientific institute.
Under pretext of putting learning at the service of God and of religion,
the Church had fostered the worst of vices, pride. According to some it
is her title to glory, but it will be her greatest shame.
Must we renounce the use of this weapon against the enemies of the
faith? she asks. But can you imagine Jesus joining the school of the
rabbins under the pretext of learning how to reply to them, enfeebling
his thought by their dialectic subtleties and fantastic exegesis? He
might perhaps have been a great doctor, but would he have become the
Saviour of the world? You feel that he would not.
When we hear preachers going into raptures over the marvellous spread of
the gospel preached by twelve poor fishermen of Galilee, might we not
point out to them that the miracle is at once more and less astounding
than they say? More--for among the twelve several returned to the shores
of their charming lake, and forgetful of the mystic net, thought of the
Crucified One, if they thought of him at all, only to lament him, and
not to raise him from the dead by continuing his work in the four
quarters of the world; less--for if even now, in these dying days of the
nineteenth century, preachers would go forth beside themselves with
love, sacrificing themselves for each and all as in the old days their
Master did, the miracle would be repeated again.
But no; theology has killed religion. The clergy repeat to satiety that
we must not confound the two; but what good does this do if in practice
we do not distinguish them?
Never was learning more eagerly coveted than in the thirteenth century.
The Empire and the Church were anxiously asking of it the arguments with
which they might defend their opposing claims. Innocent III. sends the
collection of his Decretals to the University of Bologna and heaps
favors upon it. Frederick II. founds that of Naples, and the Patarini
themselves send their sons from Tuscany and Lombardy to study at Paris.
We remember the success of Francis's preaching at Bologna,[13] in
August, 1220; at the same period he had strongly reprimanded Pietro
Staccia, the provincial minister and a doctor of laws, not only for
having installed the Brothers in a house which appeared to belong to
them, but especially for having organized a sort of college there.
It appears that the minister paid no attention to these reproaches. When
Francis became aware of his obstinacy he cursed him with frightful
vehemence; his indignation was so great that when, later on, Pietro
Staccia was about to die and his numerous friends came to entreat
Francis to revoke his malediction, all their efforts were in vain.[14]
In the face of this attitude of the founder it is very difficult to
believe in the authenticity of the note purporting to be addressed to
Anthony of Padua:
"To my very dear Anthony, brother Francis, greetings in Christ.
"It pleases me that you interpret to the Brothers the sacred
writings and theology, in such a way, however (conformably to
our Rule), that the spirit of holy prayer be not extinguished
either in you or in the others, which I desire earnestly.
Greetings."
Must we see in this a pious fraud to weaken the numberless clear
declarations of Francis against learning?
It is difficult to picture to ourselves the rivalry which existed at
this time between the Dominicans and Franciscans in the attempt to draw
the most illustrious masters into their respective Orders. Petty
intrigues were organized, in which the devotees had each his part, to
lead such or such a famous doctor to assume the habit.[15] If the
object of St. Francis had been scientific, the friars of Bologna, Paris,
and Oxford could not have done more.[16]
The current was so strong that the elder Orders were swept away in it
whether they would or no; twenty years later the Cistercians also
desired to become legists, theologians, decretalists, and the rest.
Perhaps Francis did not in the outset perceive the gravity of the
danger, but illusion was no longer possible, and from this time he
showed, as we have seen, an implacable firmness. If later on his thought
was travestied, the guilty ones--the popes and most of the
ministers-general--were obliged to resort to feats of prestidigitation
that are not to their credit. "Suppose," he would say, "that you had
subtility and learning enough to know all things, that you were
acquainted with all languages, the courses of the stars, and all the
rest, what is there in that to be proud of? A single demon knows more on
these subjects than all the men in this world put together.[17] But
there is one thing that the demon is incapable of, and which is the
glory of man: to be faithful to God."[18]
Definite information with regard to the chapters of 1222 and 1223 is
wanting. The proposed modifications of the project of 1221 were
discussed by the ministers[19] and afterward definitively settled by
Cardinal Ugolini. The latter had long conferences on the subject with
Francis, who has himself given us the account of them.[20]
The result of them all was the Rule of 1223. Very soon a swarm of
marvellous stories, which it would be tedious to examine in detail, came
to be clustered around the origin of this document; all that we need to
retain of them is the memory that they keep of the struggles of Francis
against the ministers for the preservation of his ideal.
Before going to Rome to ask for the final approbation he had meditated
long in the solitude of Monte Colombo, near Rieti. This hill was soon
represented as a new Sinai, and the disciples pictured their master on
its heights receiving another Decalogue from the hands of Jesus
himself.[21]
Angelo Clareno, one of the most complacent narrators of these
traditions, takes upon himself to point out their slight value; he shows
us Honorious III. modifying an essential passage in the plan at the last
moment.[22] I have already so far described this Rule that there is no
need to return to the subject here.
It was approved November 25, 1223.[23] Many memories appear to have
clustered about the journey of Francis to Rome. One day Cardinal
Ugolini, whose hospitality he had accepted, was much surprised, and his
guests as well, to find him absent as they were about to sit down at
table, but they soon saw him coming, carrying a quantity of pieces of
dry bread, which he joyfully distributed to all the noble company. His
host, somewhat abashed by the proceeding, having undertaken after the
meal to reproach him a little, Francis explained that he had no right to
forget, for a sumptuous feast, the bread of charity on which he was fed
every day, and that he desired thus to show his brethren that the
richest table is not worth so much to the poor in spirit as this table
of the Lord.[24]
We have seen that during the earlier years the Brothers Minor had been
in the habit of earning their bread by going out as servants. Some of
them, a very small number, had continued to do so. Little by little, in
this matter also all had been changed. Under color of serving, the
friars entered the families of the highest personages of the pontifical
court, and became their confidential attendants; instead of submitting
themselves to all, as the Rule of 1221 ordained, they were above
everyone.
Entirely losing sight of the apostolic life, they became courtiers of a
special type; their character, half ecclesiastic and half lay, rendered
them capable of carrying out a number of delicate missions and of
playing a part in the varied intrigues for which the greater number of
Roman prelates have always seemed to live.[25] By way of protest
Francis had only one weapon, his example.
One day, the Speculum relates, the Blessed Francis came to Rome
to see the Bishop of Ostia (Ugolini), and after having remained
some time at his house, he went also to visit Cardinal Leo, who
had a great devotion for him.
It was winter; the cold, the wind, the rain made any journey
impossible, so the cardinal begged him to pass a few days in his
house and to take his food there, like the other poor folk who
came there to eat. ... "I will give you," he added, "a good
lodging, quite retired, where if you like you may pray and eat."
Then Brother Angelo, one of the twelve first disciples, who
lived with the cardinal, said to Francis: "There is, close by
here, a great tower standing by itself and very quiet; you will
be there as in a hermitage." Francis went to see it and it
pleased him. Then, returning to the cardinal, "Monsignor," he
said, "it is possible that I may pass a few days with you." The
latter was very joyful, and Brother Angelo went to prepare the
tower for the Blessed Francis and his companion.
But the very first night, when he would have slept, the demons
came and smote him. Calling then to his companion, "Brother," he
said, "the demons have come and smitten me with violence; remain
near me, I beg, for I am afraid here alone."
He was trembling in all his members, like one who has a fever.
They passed the night both without sleeping. "The demons are
commissioned with the chastisements of God," said Francis; "as a
podestà sends his executioner to punish the criminal, so God
sends demons, who in this are his ministers.... Why has he sent
them to me? Perhaps this is the reason: The cardinal desired to
be kind to me, and I have truly great need of repose, but the
Brothers who are out in the world, suffering hunger and a
thousand tribulations, and also those others who are in
hermitages or in miserable houses, when they hear of my sojourn
with a cardinal will be moved to repine. 'We endure all
privations,' they will say, 'while he has all that he can
desire; 'but I ought to give them a good example--that is my
true mission." ...
Early next morning, therefore he quitted the tower, and having
told the cardinal all, took leave of him and returned to the
hermitage of Monte Colombo, near Rieti. "They think me a holy
man," he said, "and see, it needed demons to cast me out of
prison."[26]
This story, notwithstanding its strange coloring, shows plainly how
strong was his instinct for independence. To compare the hospitality of
a cardinal to an imprisonment! He spoke better than he knew,
characterizing in one word the relation of the Church to his Order.
The lark was not dead; in spite of cold and the north wind it gayly took
its flight to the vale of Rieti.
It was mid-December. An ardent desire to observe to the life the
memories of Christmas had taken possession of Francis. He opened his
heart to one of his friends, the knight Giovanni di Greccio, who
undertook the necessary preparations.
The imitation of Jesus has in all times been the very centre of
Christianity; but one must be singularly spiritual to be satisfied with
the imitation of the heart. With most men there is need that this should
be preceded and sustained by an external imitation. It is indeed the
spirit that gives life, but it is only in the country of the angels that
one can say that the flesh profiteth nothing.
In the Middle Ages a religious festival was before all things else a
representation, more or less faithful, of the event which it recalled;
hence the _santons_ of Provence, the processions of the _Palmesel_, the
Holy Supper of Maundy Thursday, the Road to the Cross of Good Friday,
the drama of the Resurrection of Easter, and the flaming tow of
Whitsunday. Francis was too thoroughly Italian not to love these
festivals where every visible thing speaks of God and of his love.
The population of Greccio and its environs was, therefore, convoked, as
well as the Brothers from the neighboring monasteries. On the evening of
the vigil of Christmas one might have seen the faithful hastening to the
hermitage by every path with torches in their hands, making the forests
ring with their joyful hymns.
Everyone was rejoicing--Francis most of all. The knight had prepared a
stable with straw, and brought an ox and an ass, whose breath seemed to
give warmth to the poor _bambino_, benumbed with the cold. At the sight
the saint felt tears of pity bedew his face; he was no longer in
Greccio, his heart was in Bethlehem.
Finally they began to chant matins; then the mass was begun, and
Francis, as deacon, read the Gospel. Already hearts were touched by the
simple recital of the sacred legend in a voice so gentle and so fervent,
but when he preached, his emotion soon overcame the audience; his voice
had so unutterable a tenderness that they also forgot everything, and
were living over again the feeling of the shepherds of Judea who in
those old days went to adore the God made man, born in a stable.[27]
Toward the close of the thirteenth century, the author of the _Stabat
Mater dolorosa_, Giacopone dei Todi, that Franciscan of genius who spent
a part of his life in dungeons, inspired by the memory of Greccio,
composed another Stabat, that of joy, _Stabat Mater speciosa_. This hymn
of Mary beside the manger is not less noble than that of Mary at the
foot of the cross. The sentiment is even more tender, and it is hard to
explain its neglect except by an unjust caprice of fate.
Stabat Mater speciosa
Juxtum foenum gaudiosa
Dum jacebat parvulus.
Quæ gaudebat et ridebat
Exsultabat cum videbat
Nati partum inclyti.
Fac me vere congaudere
Jesulino cohærere
Donec ego vixero.[28]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] All this took place with prodigious rapidity. The dimensions
of the Basilica of Assisi, the plans of which were made in 1228,
no more permits it to be considered as a conventual chapel than
Santa-Croce in Florence, San Francesco in Sienna, or the
Basilica San Antonio at Padua, monuments commenced between 1230
and 1240. Already before 1245 one party of the episcopate utters
a cry of alarm, in which he speaks of nothing less than of
closing the door of the secular churches, which have become
useless. He complains with incredible bitterness that the Minor
and Preaching Friars have absolutely supplanted the parochial
clergy. This letter may be found in Pierre de la Vigne,
addressed at once to Frederick II. and the Council of Lyons:
_Epistolæ_, Basle, 1740, 2 vols., vol. i., pp. 220-222. It is
much to be desired that a critical text should be given. See
also the satire against the two new Orders, done in rhyme about
1242 by Pierre de la Vigne, and of which, allowing for possible
exaggerations, the greater number of the incidents cannot have
been invented: E. du Méril, _Poésies pop. lat._, pp. 153-177,
Paris, 8vo, 1847.
[2] And not of the 29th, as Sbaralea will have it. _Bull. fr._,
vol. i., n. 10. Horoy, vol. iv., col. 129; the original, still
in the archives of Assisi, bears the title: _Datum Anagnie 11
Kalendas Aprilis pontificatus nostri anno sexto_.
[3] Potthast, 6809; Horoy, iv., col. 129. See also the bull
_Ecce Venit Deus_ of July 14, 1227; L. Auvray: _Registres de
Grégoire IX._, no. 129; cf. 153; Potthast, 8027 and 8028, 8189.
[4] He had finished his mission as legate in Lombardy toward the
close of September, 1221 (see his register; cf. Böhmer, _Acta
imp. sel. doc._, 951). In the spring of 1222 we find him
continually near the pope at Anagni, Veroli, Alatri (Potthast,
6807, 6812, 6849). The Holy See had still at that time a marked
predilection for the Preachers; the very trite privilege of
power to celebrate the offices in times of interdict had been
accorded them March 7, 1222, but instead of the formula usual in
such cases, a revised form had been made expressly for them,
with a handsome eulogy. Ripolli, _Bull. Præd._, t. i., p. 15.
[5] 2 Cel., 3, 93: _Subtrahebat se a consortio fratrum._
[6] It is needless to say that local traditions, in this case,
though as to detail they must be accepted only with great
reserve, yet on the whole are surely true. The geography of St.
Francis's life is yet to be made.
[7] 2 Cel., 3, 59; Bon., 60; _Conform._, 122b, 2.
[8] 2 Cel., 3, 5; _Spec._, 12a; _Conform._, 169b, 2.
[9] Eccl., 6. Vide Liebermann's text, _Mon. Germ. hist.
Script._, t. 28, p. 663.
[10] 2 Cel., 3, 93; Bon., 104 and 105; _Conform._, 101a, 2.
[11] 2 Cel., 3, 93; _Spec._, 49b; 182a; _Conform._, 182a, 1;
_Tribul._, f^o 5a; 2 Cel., 3, 98; 113; 115; 1 Cel., 28, 50; 96;
103; 104; 108; 111; 118.
[12] 2 Cel., 3, 27; _Spec._, 38b; _Conform._, 181b, 1;
_Tribul._, 7b. Cf. _Spec._, 220b; _Conform._, 103b.
[13] Francis's successors were nearly all without exception
students of Bologna. Pietro di Catana was doctor of laws, as
also Giovanni Parenti (Giord., 51).--Elias had been _scriptor_
at Bologna.--Alberto of Pisa had been minister there (Eccl.,
6).--Aymon had been reader there (Eccl., 6).--Crescentius wrote
works on jurisprudence (_Conform._, 121b, 1, etc., etc.).
[14] This name cannot be warranted; he is called Giovanni di
Laschaccia in a passage of the _Conformities_ (104a, 1); Pietro
Schiaccia in the Italian MS. of the _Tribulations_ (f^o 75a);
Petrus Stacia in the Laurentinian MS. (13b; cf. _Archiv._, ii.,
p. 258). _Tribul._, 13b; _Spec._, 184b. This story has been much
amplified in other places. _Spec._, 126a; _Conform._, 104b, 1.
[15] Vide Eccl., 3: History of the entrance of Adam of Oxford
into the Order. Cf., _Chartularium Univ. Par._, t. i., nos. 47
and 49.
[16] Eccleston's entire chronicle is a living witness to this.
[17] _Admonitio_, v.; cf. _Conform._, 141a.
Compare the _Constitutiones antiquæ_ (_Speculum_, Morin, iii.,
f^o 195b-206) with the Rule. From the opening chapters the
contradiction is apparent: _Ordinamus quod nullus recipiatur in
ordine nostro nisi sit talis clericus qui sit competenter
instructus in grammatica vel logica; aut nisi sit talis laicus
de cujus ingressu esset valde celebris et edificatio in populo
et in clero_. This is surely far from the spirit of him who
said: _Et quicumque venerit amicus vel adversarius fur vel latro
benigne recipiatur_. Rule of 1221, cap. vii. See also the
Exposition of the Rule of Bonaventura. _Speculum_, Morin, iii.,
f^o 21-40.
[18] Upon Francis's attitude toward learning see _Tribul._,
Laur., 14b; _Spec._, 184a; 2 Cel., 3, 8; 48; 100; 116; 119;
120-124. Bon., chap. 152, naturally expresses only Bonaventura's
views. See especially Rule of 1221, cap. xvii.; of 1223, cap. x.
[19] _Spec._, 7b: _Fecit Franciscus regulam quam papa Honorius
confirmavit cum bulla, de qua regula multa fuerunt extracta per
ministros contra voluntatem b. Francisci_. Cf. 2 Cel., 3, 136.
[20] Bull _Quo elongati_ of September 28, 1230; Sbaralea, i., p.
56.
[21] Bon., 55 and 56 [3 Soc., 62]; _Spec._, 76; 124a; _Tribul._,
Laur., 17b-19b; Ubertini, _Arbor. V._, 5; _Conform._, 88a, 2.
[22] _Tribul._, Laur., 19a; _Archiv._, t. iii., p. 601. Cf. A.
SS., p. 638e.
[23] Potthast, 7108.--The work of this bull was completed by
that of December 18, 1223. (The original of the _Sacro Convento_
bears _Datum Laterani XV. Kal. jan._) _Fratrem Minorum_:
Potthast, 7123.
[24] 2 Cel., 3, 19; Bon., 95; _Spec._, 18b; _Conform._, 171a, 1.
[25] 2 Cel., 3, 61 and 62. Cf. Eccl., 6, the account of Rod. de
Rosa.
[26] _Spec._, 47b ff.; 2 Cel., 3, 61; Bon., 84 and 85.
[27] 1 Cel., 84-87; Bon., 149.
[28] This little poem was published entire by M. Ozanam in vol.
v. of his works, p. 184.
* * * * *