CHAPTER III
THE CHURCH ABOUT 1209
St. Francis was inspired as much as any man may be, but it would be a
palpable error to study him apart from his age and from the conditions
in which he lived.
We know that he desired and believed his life to be an imitation of
Jesus, but what we know about the Christ is in fact so little, that St.
Francis's life loses none of its strangeness for that. His conviction
that he was but an imitator preserved him from all temptation to pride,
and enabled him to proclaim his views with incomparable vigor, without
seeming in the least to be preaching himself.
We must therefore neither isolate him from external influences nor show
him too dependent on them. During the period of his life at which we are
now arrived, 1205-1206, the religious situation of Italy must more than
at any other time have influenced his thought and urged him into the
path which he finally entered.
The morals of the clergy were as corrupt as ever, rendering any serious
reform impossible. If some among the heresies of the time were pure and
without reproach, many were trivial and impure. Here and there a few
voices were raised in protest, but the prophesyings of Gioacchino di
Fiore had no more power than those of St. Hildegarde to put a stop to
wickedness. Luke Wadding, the pious Franciscan annalist, begins his
chronicle with this appalling picture. The advance in historic research
permits us to retouch it somewhat more in detail, but the conclusion
remains the same; without Francis of Assisi the Church would perhaps
have foundered and the Cathari would have won the day. The _little poor
man_, driven away, cast out of doors by the creatures of Innocent III.,
saved Christianity.
We cannot here make a thorough study of the state of the Church at the
beginning of the thirteenth century; it will suffice to trace some of
its most prominent features.
The first glance at the secular clergy brings out into startling
prominence the ravages of simony; the traffic in ecclesiastical places
was carried on with boundless audacity; benefices were put up to the
highest bidder, and Innocent III. admitted that fire and sword alone
could heal this plague.[1] Prelates who declined to be bought by
_propinæ_, fees, were held up as astounding exceptions![2]
"They are stones for understanding," it was said of the officers of the
Roman _curia_, "wood for justice, fire for wrath, iron for forgiveness;
deceitful as foxes, proud as bulls, greedy and insatiate as the
minotaur."[3] The praises showered upon Pope Eugenius III. for
rebuffing a priest who, at the beginning of a lawsuit, offered him a
golden mark, speak only too plainly as to the morals of Rome in this
respect.[4]
The bishops, on their part, found a thousand methods, often most out of
keeping with their calling, for extorting money from the simple
priests.[5] Violent, quarrelsome, contentious, they were held up to
ridicule in popular ballads from one end of Europe to the other.[6] As
to the priests, they bent all their powers to accumulate benefices, and
secure inheritances from the dying, stooping to the most despicable
measures for providing for their bastards.[7]
The monastic orders were hardly more reputable. A great number of these
had sprung up in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; their reputation
for sanctity soon stimulated the liberality of the faithful, and thus
fatally brought about their own decadence. Few communities had shown the
discretion of the first monks of the Order of Grammont in the diocese of
Limoges. When Stephen de Muret, its founder, began to manifest his
sanctity by giving sight to a blind man, his disciples took alarm at the
thought of the wealth and notoriety which was likely to come to them
from this cause. Pierre of Limoges, who had succeeded Stephen as prior,
went at once to his tomb, praying:
"O servant of God, thou hast shown us the way of poverty, and
behold, thou wouldst make us leave the strait and difficult path
of salvation, and wouldst set us in the broad road of eternal
death. Thou hast preached to us (the virtues of) solitude, and
thou art about to change this place into a fair and a
market-place. We know well that thou art a saint! Thou hast no
need to prove it to us by performing miracles which will destroy
our humility. Be not so zealous for thy reputation as to augment
it to the injury of our salvation. This is what we ask of thee,
expecting it of thy love. If not, we declare unto thee by the
obedience which we once owed to thee, we will unearth thy bones
and throw them into the river."
Stephen obeyed up to the time of his canonization (1189), but from that
time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the
solitude of Grammont that its monks became the byword and scoff of the
Christian world.[8]
Pierre of Limoges was not entirely without reason in fearing that his
monastery would be transformed into a fair-ground; members of the
chapters of most of the cathedrals kept wine-shops literally under their
shadows, and certain monasteries did not hesitate to attract custom by
jugglers of all kinds and even by courtesans.[9]
To form an idea of the degradation of the greater number of the monks it
is not enough to read the oratorical and often exaggerated reproofs of
preachers obliged to strike hard in order to produce an effect. We must
run through the collection of bulls, where appeals to the court of Rome
against assassinations, violations, incests, adulteries, recur on
almost every page. It is easy to see that even an Innocent III. might
feel himself helpless and tempted to yield to discouragement, in the
face of so many ills.[10]
The best spirits were turning toward the Orient, asking themselves if
perchance the Greek Church might not suddenly come forward to purify all
these abuses, and receive for herself the inheritance of her sister.[11]
The clergy, though no longer respected, still overawed the people
through their superstitious terror of their power. Here and there might
have been perceived many a forewarning of direful revolts; the roads to
Rome were crowded with monks hastening to claim the protection of the
Holy See against the people among whom they lived. The Pope would
promptly declare an interdict, but it was not to be expected that such a
resource would avail forever.[12]
To maintain the privileges of the Church the papacy was often obliged to
spread the mantle of its protection over those who deserved it least.
Its clients were not always as interesting as the unfortunate
Ingelburge. It would be easier to give unreserved admiration to the
conduct of Innocent III. if in this matter one could feel certain that
his only interest was to maintain the cause of a poor abandoned woman.
But it is only too evident that he desired above all to keep up the
ecclesiastical immunities. This is very evident in his intervention in
favor of Waldemar, Bishop of Schleswig.
Yet we must not assume that all was corrupt in the bosom of the Church;
then, as always, the evil made more noise than the good, and the voices
of those who desired a reformation aroused only passing interest.
Among the populace there was superstition unimaginable; the pulpit,
which ought to have shed abroad some little light, was as yet open only
to the bishops, and the few pastors who did not neglect their duty in
this regard accomplished very little, being too much absorbed in other
duties. It was the birth of the mendicant orders which obliged the
entire body of secular clergy to take up the practice of preaching.
Public worship, reduced to liturgical ceremonies, no longer preserved
anything which appealed to the intelligence; it was more and more
becoming a sort of self-acting magic formula. Once upon this road, the
absurd was not far distant. Those who deemed themselves pious told of
miracles performed by relics with no need of aid from the moral act of
faith.
In one case a parrot, being carried away by a kite, uttered the
invocation dear to his mistress, "_Sancte Thoma adjuva me_," and was
miraculously rescued. In another, a merchant of Groningen, having
purloined an arm of St. John the Baptist, grew rich as if by enchantment
so long as he kept it concealed in his house, but was reduced to beggary
so soon as, his secret being discovered, the relic was taken away from
him and placed in a church.[13]
These stories, we must observe, do not come from ignorant enthusiasts,
hidden away in obscure country places; they are given us by one of the
most learned monks of his time, who relates them to a novice by way of
forming his mind!
Relics, then, were held to be neither more nor less than talismans. Not
alone did they perform miracles upon those who were in no special state
of faith or devotion, the more potent among them healed the sick in
spite of themselves. A chronicler relates that the body of Saint Martin
of Tours had in 887 been secretly transported to some remote hiding
place for fear of the Danish invasion. When the time came for bringing
it home again, there were in Touraine two impotent men who, thanks to
their infirmity, gained large sums by begging. They were thrown into
great terror by the tidings that the relics were being brought back:
Saint Martin would certainly heal them and take away their means of
livelihood. Their fears were only too well founded. They had taken to
flight, but being too lame to walk fast they had not yet crossed the
frontier of Touraine when the saint arrived and healed them!
Hundreds of similar stories might be collected, statistics might be made
up to show, at the accession of Innocent III., the greater number of
episcopal thrones occupied by unworthy bishops, the religious houses
peopled with idle and debauched monks; but would this give a truly
accurate picture of the Church at this epoch? I do not think so. In the
first place, we must reckon with the choice spirits, who were without
doubt more numerous than is generally supposed. Five righteous men would
have saved Sodom; the Almighty did not find them there, but he perhaps
might have found them had He Himself made search for them instead of
trusting to Lot. The Church of the thirteenth century had them, and it
was for their sakes that the whirlwind of heresy did not sweep it away.
But this is not all: the Church of that time offered a noble spectacle
of moral grandeur. We must learn to lift our eyes from the wretched
state of things which has just been pointed out and fix them on the
pontifical throne and recognize the beauty of the struggle there going
on: a power wholly spiritual undertaking to command the rulers of the
world, as the soul masters the body, and triumphing in the end. It is
true that both soldiers and generals of this army were often little
better than ruffians, but here again, in order to be just, we must
understand the end they aimed at.
In that iron age, when brute force was the only force, the Church,
notwithstanding its wounds, offered to the world the spectacle of
peasants and laboring men receiving the humble homage of the highest
potentates of earth, simply because, seated on the throne of Saint
Peter, they represented the moral law. This is why Alighieri and many
others before and after him, though they might heap curses on wicked
ministers, yet in the depths of their heart were never without an
immense compassion and an ardent love for the Church which they never
ceased to call their mother.
Still, everybody was not like them, and the vices of the clergy explain
the innumerable heresies of that day. All of them had a certain success,
from those which were simply the outcry of an outraged conscience, like
that of the Waldenses, to the most absurd of them all, like that of Eon
de l'Étoile. Some of these movements were for great and sacred causes;
but we must not let our sympathies be so moved by the persecutions
suffered by heretics as to cloud our judgment. It would have been better
had Rome triumphed by gentleness, by education and holiness, but
unhappily a soldier may not always choose his weapons, and when life is
at stake he seizes the first he finds within his reach. The papacy has
not always been reactionary and obscurantist; when it overthrew the
Cathari, for example, its victory was that of reason and good sense.
The list of the heresies of the thirteenth century is already long, but
it is increasing every day, to the great joy of those erudite ones who
are making strenuous efforts to classify everything in that tohu-bohu of
mysticism and folly. In that day heresy was very much alive; it was
consequently very complex and its powers of transformation infinite. One
may indicate its currents, mark its direction, but to go farther is to
condemn oneself to utter confusion in this medley of impulsive,
passionate, fantastic movements which were born, shot upward, and fell
to earth again, at the caprice of a thousand incomprehensible
circumstances. In certain counties of England there are at the present
day villages having as many as eight and ten places of worship for a few
hundreds of inhabitants. Many of these people change their denomination
every three or four years, returning to that they first quitted, leaving
it again only to enter it anew, and so on as long as they live. Their
leaders set the example, throwing themselves enthusiastically into each
new movement only to leave it before long. They would all alike find it
difficult to give an intelligible reason for these changes. They say
that the Spirit guides them, and it would be unfair to disbelieve them,
but the historian who should investigate conditions like these would
lose his head in the labyrinth unless he made a separate study of each
of these Protean movements. They are surely not worth the trouble.
In a somewhat similar condition was a great part of Christendom under
Innocent III.; but while the sects of which I have just spoken move in a
very narrow circle of dogmas and ideas, in the thirteenth century every
sort of excess followed in rapid succession. Without the slightest
pause of transition men passed through the most contradictory systems of
belief. Still, a few general characteristics may be observed; in the
first place, heresies are no longer metaphysical subtleties as in
earlier days; Arius and Priscillian, Nestorius and Eutychus are dead
indeed. In the second place, they no longer arise in the upper and
governing class, but proceed especially from the inferior clergy and the
common people. The blows which actually threatened the Church of the
Middle Ages were struck by obscure laboring men, by the poor and the
oppressed, who in their wretchedness and degradation felt that she had
failed in her mission.
No sooner was a voice uplifted, preaching austerity and simplicity, than
it drew together not the laity only, but members of the clergy as well.
Toward the close of the twelfth century we find a certain Pons rousing
all Perigord, preaching evangelical poverty before the coming of St.
Francis.[14]
Two great currents are apparent: on one side the Cathari, on the other,
innumerable sects revolting from the Church by very fidelity to
Christianity and the desire to return to the primitive Church.
Among the sects of the second category the close of the twelfth century
saw in Italy the rise of the _Poor Men_, who without doubt were a part
of the movement of Arnold of Brescia; they denied the efficacy of
sacraments administered by unworthy hands.[15]
A true attempt at reform was made by the Waldenses. Their history,
although better known, still remains obscure on certain sides; their
name, _Poor Men of Lyons_, recalls the former movement, with which they
were in close agreement, as also with the Humiliants. All these names
involuntarily suggest that by which St. Francis afterward called his
Order. The analogy between the inspiration of Peter Waldo and that of
St. Francis was so close that one might be tempted to believe the latter
a sort of imitation of the former. It would be a mistake: the same
causes produced in all quarters the same effects; ideas of reform, of a
return to gospel poverty, were in the air, and this helps us to
understand how it was that before many years the Franciscan preaching
reverberated through the entire world. If at the outset the careers of
these two men were alike, their later lives were very different. Waldo,
driven into heresy almost in spite of himself, was obliged to accept the
consequences of the premises which he himself had laid down;[16] while
Francis, remaining the obedient son of the Church, bent all his efforts
to develop the inner life in himself and his disciples. It is indeed
most likely that through his father Francis had become acquainted with
the movement of the _Poor Men of Lyons_. Hence his oft-repeated counsels
to his friars of the duty of submission to the clergy. When he went to
seek the approbation of Innocent III., it is evident that the prelates
with whom he had relations warned him, by the very example of Waldo, of
the dangers inherent in his own movement.[17]
The latter had gone to Rome in 1179, accompanied by a few followers, to
ask at the same time the approbation of their translation of the
Scriptures into the vulgar tongue and the permission to preach. They
were granted both requests on condition of gaining for their preaching
the authorization of their local clergy. Walter Map ([Cross] 1210), who was
charged with their examination, was constrained, while ridiculing their
simplicity, to admire their poverty and zeal for the apostolic life.[18]
Two or three years later they met a very different reception at Rome,
and in 1184 they were anathematized by the Council of Verona. From that
day nothing could stop them, even to the forming of a new Church. They
multiplied with a rapidity hardly exceeded afterward by the Franciscans.
By the end of the twelfth century we find them spread abroad from
Hungary to Spain; the first attempts to hunt them down were made in the
latter country. Other countries were at first satisfied with treating
them as excommunicated persons.
Obliged to hide themselves, reduced to the impossibility of holding
their chapters, which ought to have come together once or twice a year,
and which, had they done so, might have maintained among them a certain
unity of doctrine, the Waldenses rapidly underwent a change according to
their environment; some obstinately insisting upon calling themselves
good Catholics, others going so far as to preach the overthrow of the
hierarchy and the uselessness of sacraments.[19] Hence that multiplicity
of differing and even hostile branches which seemed to develop almost
hourly.
A common persecution brought them nearer to the Cathari and favored the
fusion of their ideas. Their activity was inconceivable. Under pretext
of pilgrimages to Rome they were always on the road, simple and
insinuating. The methods of travel of that day were peculiarly favorable
to the diffusion of ideas. While retailing news to those whose
hospitality they received, they would speak of the unhappy state of the
Church and the reforms that were needed. Such conversations were a means
of apostleship much more efficacious than those of the present day, the
book and the newspaper; there is nothing like the _viva vox_[20] for
spreading thought.
Many vile stories have been told of the Waldenses; calumny is far too
facile a weapon not to tempt an adversary at bay. Thus they have been
charged with the same indecent promiscuities of which the early
Christians were accused. In reality their true strength was in their
virtues, which strongly contrasted with the vices of the clergy.
The most powerful and determined enemies of the Church were the Cathari.
Sincere, audacious, often learned and keen in argument, having among
them some choice spirits and men of great intellectual powers, they were
pre-eminently the heretics of the thirteenth century. Their revolt did
not bear upon points of detail and questions of discipline, like that of
the early Waldenses; it had a definite doctrinal basis, taking issue
with the whole body of Catholic dogma. But, although this heresy
flourished in Italy and under the very eyes of St. Francis, there is
need only to indicate it briefly. His work may have received many
infiltrations from the Waldensian movement, but Catharism was wholly
foreign to it.
This is naturally explained by the fact that St. Francis never consented
to occupy himself with questions of doctrine. For him faith was not of
the intellectual but the moral domain; it is the consecration of the
heart. Time spent in dogmatizing appeared to him time lost.
An incident in the life of Brother Egidio well brings out the slight
esteem in which theology was held by the early Brothers Minor. One day,
in the presence of St. Bonaventura, he cried, perhaps not without a
touch of irony, "Alas! what shall we ignorant and simple ones do to
merit the favor of God?" "My brother," replied the famous divine, "you
know very well that it suffices to love the Lord." "Are you very sure of
that?" replied Egidio; "do you believe that a simple woman might please
Him as well as a master in theology?" Upon the affirmative response of
his interlocutor, he ran out into the street and calling to a beggar
woman with all his might, "Poor old creature," he exclaimed, "rejoice,
for if you love God, you may have a higher place in the kingdom of
heaven than Brother Bonaventura!"[21]
The Cathari, then, had no direct influence upon St. Francis,[22] but
nothing could better prove the disturbance of thought at this epoch
than that resurrection of Manicheism. To what a depth of lassitude and
folly must religious Italy have fallen for this mixture of Buddhism,
Mazdeism, and gnosticism to have taken such hold upon it! The Catharist
doctrine rested upon the antagonism of two principles, one bad, the
other good. The first had created matter; the second, the soul, which,
for generation after generation passes from one body to another until it
achieves salvation. Matter is the cause and the seat of evil; all
contact with it constitutes a blemish,[23] consequently the Cathari
renounced marriage and property and advocated suicide. All this was
mixed up with most complicated cosmogonical myths.
Their adherents were divided into two classes--the pure or perfect, and
the believers, who were proselytes in the second degree, and whose
obligations were very simple. The adepts, properly so called, were
initiated by the ceremony of the _consolamentum_ or imposition of hands,
which induced the descent upon them of the Consoling Spirit. Among them
were enthusiasts who after this ceremony placed themselves in
_endura_--that is to say, they starved themselves to death in order not
to descend from this state of grace.
In Languedoc, where this sect went by the name of Albigenses, they had
an organization which embraced all Central Europe, and everywhere
supported flourishing schools attended by the children of the nobles. In
Italy they were hardly less powerful; Concorrezo, near Monza in
Lombardy, and Bagnolo, gave their names to two congregations slightly
different from those in Languedoc.[24]
But it was especially from Milan[25] that they spread abroad over all
the Peninsula, making proselytes even in the most remote districts of
Calabria. The state of anarchy prevailing in the country was very
favorable to them. The papacy was too much occupied in baffling the
spasmodic efforts of the Hohenstaufen, to put the necessary perseverance
and system into its struggles against heresy. Thus the new ideas were
preached under the very shadow of the Lateran; in 1209, Otho IV., coming
to Rome to be crowned, found there a school in which Manicheism was
publicly taught.[26]
With all his energy Innocent III. had not been able to check this evil
in the States of the Church. The case of Viterbo tells much of the
difficulty of repressing it; in March, 1199, the pope wrote to the
clergy and people of this town to recall to their minds, and at the same
time to increase, the penalties pronounced against heresy. For all that,
the Patarini had the majority in 1205, and succeeded in naming one of
themselves consul.[27]
The wrath of the pontiff at this event was unbounded; he fulminated a
bull menacing the city with fire and sword, and commanding the
neighboring towns to throw themselves upon her if within a fortnight she
had not given satisfaction.[28] It was all in vain: the Patarini were
dealt with only as a matter of form; it needed the presence of the pope
himself to assure the execution of his orders and obtain the demolition
of the houses of the heretics and their abettors (autumn of 1207).[29]
But stifled at one point the revolt burst out at a hundred others; at
this moment it was triumphant on all sides; at Ferrara, Verona, Rimini,
Florence, Prato, Faenza, Treviso, Piacenza. The clergy were expelled
from this last town, which remained more than three years without a
priest.[30]
Viterbo is twenty leagues from Assisi, Orvieto only ten, and
disturbances in this town were equally grave. A noble Roman, Pietro
Parentio, the deputy of the Holy See in this place, endeavored to
exterminate the Patarini. He was assassinated.[31]
But Francis needed not to go even so far as Orvieto to become acquainted
with heretics. In Assisi the same things were going on as in the
neighboring cities. In 1203 this town had elected for podestà a heretic
named Giraldo di Gilberto, and in spite of warnings from Rome had
persisted in keeping him at the head of affairs until the expiration of
his term of office (1204). Innocent III., who had not yet been obliged
to use vigor with Viterbo, resorted to persuasion and despatched to
Umbria the Cardinal Leo di Santa Croce, who will appear more than once
in this history.[32] The successor of Giraldo and fifty of the principal
citizens made the _amende honorable_ and swore fidelity to the Church.
It is easy to perceive in what a state of ferment Italy was during these
early years of the thirteenth century. The moral discredit of the clergy
must have been deep indeed for souls to have turned toward Manicheism
with such ardor.
Italy may well be grateful to St. Francis; it was as much infected with
Catharism as Languedoc, and it was he who wrought its purification. He
did not pause to demonstrate by syllogisms or theological theses the
vanity of the Catharist doctrines; but soaring as on wings to the
religious life, he suddenly made a new ideal to shine out before the
eyes of his contemporaries, an ideal before which all these fantastic
sects vanished as birds of the night take flight at the first rays of
the sun.
A great part of St. Francis's power came to him thus through his
systematic avoidance of polemics. The latter is always more or less a
form of spiritual pride; it only deepens the chasm which it undertakes
to fill up. Truth needs not to be proved; it is its own witness.
The only weapon which he would use against the wicked was the holiness
of a life so full of love as to enlighten and revive those about him,
and compel them to love.[33] The disappearance of Catharism in Italy,
without an upheaval, and above all without the Inquisition, is thus an
indirect result of the Franciscan movement, and not the least important
among them.[34]
At the voice of the Umbrian reformer Italy roused herself, recovered her
good sense and fine temper; she cast out those doctrines of pessimism
and death, as a robust organism casts out morbid substances.
I have already endeavored to show the strong analogy between the initial
efforts of Francis and those of the Poor Men of Lyons. His thought
ripened in an atmosphere thoroughly saturated with their ideas;
unconsciously to himself they entered into his being.
The prophecies of the Calabrian abbot exerted upon him an influence
quite as difficult to appreciate, but no less profound.
Standing on the confines of Italy and as it were at the threshold of
Greece, Gioacchino di Fiore[35] was the last link in a chain of monastic
prophets, who during nearly four hundred years succeeded one another in
the monasteries and hermitages of Southern Italy. The most famous among
them had been St. Nilo, a sort of untamed John the Baptist, living in
desert places, but suddenly emerging from them when his duties of
maintaining the right called him elsewhere. We see him on one occasion
appearing in Rome itself, to announce to pope and emperor the unloosing
of the divine wrath.[36]
Scattered in the Alpine solitudes of Basilicata these Calabrian hermits
were continually obliged to retreat higher and higher into the mountain
fastnesses to escape the populace, who, pursued by pirates, were taking
refuge in these mountains. They thus passed their lives between heaven
and earth, with two seas for their horizon. Disquieted by fear of the
corsairs, and by the war-cries whose echoes reached even to them, they
turned their thoughts toward the future. The ages of great terror are
also the ages of great hope; it is to the captivity of Babylon that we
owe, with the second part of Isaiah, those pictures of the future which
have not yet ceased to charm the soul of man; Nero's persecutions gave
us the Apocalypse of St. John, and the paroxysms of the twelfth century
the eternal Gospel.
Converted after a life of dissipation, Gioacchino di Fiore travelled
extensively in the Holy Land, Greece, and Constantinople. Returning to
Italy he began, though a layman, to preach in the outskirts of Rende and
Cosenza. Later on he joined the Cistercians of Cortale, near Catanzaro,
and there took vows. Shortly after elected abbot of the monastery in
spite of refusal and even flight, he was seized after a few years with
the nostalgia of solitude, and sought from Pope Lucius III. a discharge
from his functions (1181), that he might consecrate all his time to the
works which he had in mind. The pope granted his request, and even
permitted him to go wherever he might deem best in the interest of his
work. Then began for Gioacchino a life of wandering from convent to
convent, which carried him even as far as Lombardy, to Verona, where we
find him with Pope Urban III.
When he returned to the south, a group of disciples gathered around him
to hear his explanations of the most obscure passages of the Bible.
Whether he would or no he was obliged to receive them, to talk with
them, to give them a rule, and, finally, to instal them in the very
heart of the Sila, the Black Forest of Italy,[37] over against the
highest peak, in gorges where the silence is interrupted only by the
murmurs of the Arvo and the Neto, which have their source not far from
there. The new Athos received the name of Fiore (flower), transparent
symbol of the hopes of its founder.[38] It was there that he put the
finishing touch to writings which, after fifty years of neglect, were to
become the starting-point of all heresies, and the aliment of all souls
burdened with the salvation of Christendom. The men of the first half of
the thirteenth century, too much occupied with other things, did not
perceive that the spiritual streams at which they were drinking
descended from the snowy mountain-tops of Calabria.
It is always thus with mystical influences. There is in them something
vague, tenuous, and penetrating which escapes an exact estimation. Let
two choice souls meet, and they will find it a difficult thing to
analyze and name the impressions which each has received from the other.
It is so with an epoch; it is not always those who speak to her the
oftenest and loudest whom she best understands; nor even those at whose
feet she sits, a faithful pupil, day after day. Sometimes, while on the
way to her accustomed masters, she suddenly meets a stranger; she barely
catches a few words of what he says; she knows not whence he comes nor
whither he goes; she never sees him again, but those few words of his go
on surging in the depths of her soul, agitating and disquieting her.
Thus it was for a long while with Gioacchino di Fiore. His teachings,
scattered here and there by enthusiastic disciples, were germinating
silently in many hearts.[39] Giving back hope to men, they restored to
them strength also. To think is already to act; alone under the shadow
of the hoary pines which surrounded his cell, the cenobite of Fiore was
laboring for the renovation of the Church with as much vigor as the
reformers who came after him.
He was, however, far from attaining the height of the prophets of
Israel; instead of soaring like them to the very heavens, he always
remained riveted to the text, upon which he commented in the allegorical
method, and whence by this method he brought out the most fantastic
improbabilities. A few pages of his books would wear out the most
patient reader, but in these fields, burnt over by theological arguments
more drying than the winds of the desert, fields where one at first
perceives only stones and thistles, one comes at last to the charming
oasis, with repose and dreams in its shade.
The exegesis of Gioacchino di Fiore in fact led up to a sort of
philosophy of history; its grand lines were calculated to make a
striking appeal to the imagination. The life of humanity is divided into
three periods: in the first, under the reign of the Father, men lived
under the rigor of the law; in the second, reigned over by the Son, men
live under the rule of grace; in the third, the Spirit shall reign and
men shall live in the plenitude of love. The first is the period of
servile obedience; the second, that of filial obedience; the third, that
of liberty. In the first, men lived in fear; in the second, they rest in
faith; in the third, they shall burn with love. The first saw the
shining of the stars; the second sees the whitening of the dawn; the
third will behold the glory of the day. The first produced nettles, the
second gives roses, the third will be the age of lilies.
If now we consider that in the thought of Gioacchino the third period,
the Age of the Spirit, was about to open, we shall understand with what
enthusiasm men hailed the words which restored joy to hearts still
disturbed with millenarian fears.
It is evident that St. Francis knew these radiant hopes. Who knows even
that it was not the Calabrian Seer who awoke his heart to its transports
of love? If this be so, Gioacchino was not merely his precursor; he was
his true spiritual father. However this may be, St. Francis found in
Gioacchino's thought many of the elements which, unconsciously to
himself, were to become the foundation of his institute.
The noble disdain which he shows for all men of learning, and which he
sought to inculcate upon his Order, was for Gioacchino one of the
characteristics of the new era. "The truth which remains hidden to the
wise," he says, "is revealed to babes; dialectics closes that which is
open, obscures that which is clear; it is the mother of useless talk, of
rivalries and blasphemy. Learning does not edify, and it may destroy, as
is proved by the scribes of the Church, swollen with pride and
arrogance, who by dint of reasoning fall into heresy."[40]
We have seen that the return to evangelical simplicity had become a
necessity; all the heretical sects were on this point in accord with
pious Catholics, but no one spoke in a manner so Franciscan as
Gioacchino di Fiore. Not only did he make voluntary poverty one of the
characteristics of the age of lilies, but he speaks of it in his pages
with so profound, so living an emotion, that St. Francis could do little
more than repeat his words. The ideal monk whom he describes,[41] whose
only property is a lyre, is a true Franciscan before the letter, him of
whom the _Poverello_ of Assisi always dreamed.
The feeling for nature also bursts forth in him with incomparable vigor.
One day he was preaching in a chapel which was plunged in almost total
darkness, the sky being quite overcast with clouds. Suddenly the clouds
broke away, the sun shone, the church was flooded with light. Gioacchino
paused, saluted the sun, intoned the _Veni Creator_, and led his
congregation out to gaze upon the landscape.
It would be by no means surprising if toward 1205 Francis should have
heard of this prophet, toward whom so many hearts were turning, this
anchorite who, gazing up into heaven, spoke with Jesus as a friend talks
with his friend, yet knew also how to come down to console men and warm
the faces of the dying at his own breast.
At the other end of Europe, in the heart of Germany, the same causes had
produced the same effects. From the excess of the people's sufferings
and the despair of religious souls was being born a movement of
apocalyptic mysticism which seemed to have secret communication with
that which was rousing the Peninsula. They had the same views of the
future, the same anxious expectation of new cataclysms, joined with a
prospect of a reviving of the Church.
"Cry with a loud voice," said her guardian angel to St. Elizabeth of
Schonau ([Cross] 1164), "cry to all nations: Woe! for the whole world has
become darkness. The Lord's vine has withered, there is no one to tend
it. The Lord has sent laborers, but they have all been found idle. The
head of the Church is ill and her members are dead.... Shepherds of my
Church, you are sleeping, but I shall awaken you! Kings of the earth,
the cry of your iniquity has risen even to me."[42]
"Divine justice," said St. Hildegarde ([Cross] 1178), "shall have its hour;
the last of the seven epochs symbolized by the seven days of creation
has arrived, the judgments of God are about to be accomplished; the
empire and the papacy, sunk into impiety, shall crumble away
together.... But upon their ruins shall appear a new nation of God, a
nation of prophets illuminated from on high, living in poverty and
solitude. Then the divine mysteries shall be revealed, and the saying
of Joel shall be fulfilled; the Holy Spirit shall shed abroad upon the
people the dew of his prophecies, of his wisdom and holiness; the
heathen, the Jews, the worldly and the unbelieving shall be converted
together, spring-time and peace shall reign over a regenerated world,
and the angels will return with confidence to dwell among men."
These hopes were not wholly confounded. In the evening of his days the
prophet of Fiore was able, like a new Simeon, to utter his _Nunc
dimittis_, and for a few years Christendom could turn in amazement to
Assisi as to a new Bethlehem.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Bull of June 8, 1198, _Quamvis_. Migne, i., col. 220;
Potthast, 265.
[2] For example, Pierre, Cardinal of St. Chryzogone and former
Bishop of Meaux, who in a single election refused the dazzling
offer of five hundred silver marks. Alexander III., Migne's
edition, _epist._ 395.
[3] _Fasciculus rerum expetend. et fugiend._, t. ii., 7, pp.
254, 255 (Brown, 1690).
[4] John of Salisbury, _Policrat._ Migne, v. 15.
[5] Among their sources of revenue we find the right of
_collagium_, by payment of which clerics acquired the right to
keep a concubine. Pierre le Chantre, _Verb. abbrev._, 24.
[6] Vide _Carmina Burana_, Breslau, 8vo, 1883; Political Songs
of England, published by Th. Wright, London, 8vo, 1893; _Poésies
populaires latines du moyen âge_, du Méril, Paris, 1847. See
also Raynouard, _Lexique roman_, i., 446, 451, 464, the fine
poems of the troubadour Pierre Cardinal, contemporary of St.
Francis, upon the woes of the Church, and Dante, _Inferno_, xix.
If one would gain an idea of what the bishop of a small city in
those days cost his flock, he has only to read the bull of
February 12, 1219, _Justis petentium_, addressed by Honorius
III. to the Bishop of Terni, and including the contract by which
the inhabitants of that city settled the revenues of the
episcopal see. Horoy, t. iii., col. 114, or the _Bullarium
romanum_, t. iii., p. 348, Turin.
[7] _Conosco sacerdoti che fanno gli usura per formare un
patrimonio da lasciare ai loro spurii; altri che tengono osteria
coll' insegna del collare e vendono vino_ ... Salimbene,
Cantarelli, Parma, 1882, 2 vols., 8vo, ii., p. 307.
[8] Vide _Brevis historia Prior._ _Grandimont.--Stephani
Tornacensis._ Epist. 115, 152, 153, 156, 162; Honorius III.,
Horoy's edition, lib. i., 280, 284, 286-288; ii., 12, 130, 136,
383-387.
[9] Guérard, _Cartulaire de N. D. de Paris_, t. i., p. cxi; t.
ii., p. 406. Cf. Honorius III., Bull _Inter statuta_ of July 25,
1223, Horoy, t. iv., col. 401. See also canon 23 of the Council
of Beziers, 1233; Guibert de Gemblours, _epist._ 5 and 6
(Migne); Honorius III., lib. ix., 32, 81; ii., 193; iv., 10;
iii., 253 and 258; iv., 33, 27, 70, 144; v., 56, 291, 420, 430;
vi., 214, 132, 139, 204; vii., 127; ix., 51.
[10] Vide Bull _Postquam vocante Domino_ of July 11, 1206.
Potthast 2840.
[11] V. _Annales Stadenses_ [_Monumenta Germaniæ historica,
Scriptorum_, t. 16], _ad ann. 1237_. Among the comprehensive
pictures of the situation of the Church in the thirteenth
century, there is none more interesting than that left us by the
Cardinal Jacques de Vitry in his _Historia occidentalis: Libri
duo quorum prior Orientalis, alter Occidentalis historiæ nomine
inscribitur Duaci_, 1597, 16mo. pp. 259-480.
[12] V. Honorius III., Horoy's edition, lib. i., ep. 109, 125,
135, 206, 273; ii., 128, 164; iv., 120, etc.
[13] _Dialogus miraculorum_ of Cesar of Heisterbach [Strange's
edition, Cologne, 1851, 2 vols., 8vo], t. ii., pp. 255 and 125.
This book, with the Golden Legend of Giacomo di Varaggio, gives
the best idea of the state of religious thought in the
thirteenth century.
[14] _Recueil des historiens de France._ Bouquet, t. xii., pp.
550, 551.
[15] Bonacorsi: _Vitæ hæreticorum_ [d'Achery, _Spicilegium_, t.
i., p. 215] Cf. Lucius III., epist. 171, Migne.
[16] Vide Bernard Gui, _Practica inquisitionis_, Douai edition,
4to, Paris, 1886 p. 244 ff., and especially the Vatican MS.,
2548, folio 71.
[17] A chronicle of St. Francis's time makes this same
comparison: Burchard, Abbot of Urspurg ([Cross] 1226) [_Burchardi et
Cuonradi chronicon. Monum. Germ. hist. Script._, t. 23], has
left us an account of the approbation of Francis by the Pope,
all the more precious for being that of a contemporary. _Loc.
cit._, p. 376.
[18] _De nugis Curialium_, Dist. 1, cap. 31, p. 64, Wright's
edition. Cf. _Chronique de Laon_, Bouquet xiii., p. 680.
[19] See, for example, the letter of the Italian branch of the
Poor Men of Lyons [_Pauperos Lombardi_] to their brethren of
Germany, there called Leonistes. In it they show the points in
which they are not in harmony with the French Waldenses.
Published by Preger: _Abhandlungen der K. bayer. Akademie der
Wiss. Hist. Cl._, t. xiii., 1875, p. 19 ff.
[20] These continual journeyings sometimes gained for them the
name of _Passagieni_, as in the south of France the preachers of
certain sects are to-day called _Courriers_. The term, however,
specially designates a Judaizing sect who returned to the
literal observation of the Mosaic law: Döllinger, _Beiträge_, t.
ii., pp. 327 and 375. They should therefore be identified with
the _Circonsisi_ of the constitution of Frederic II.
(Huillard-Bréholles, t. v., p. 280). See especially the fine
monograph of M. C. Molinier: _Mémoires de l'Académie de
Toulouse_, 1888.
[21] A. SS., Aprilis, t. iii., p. 238d.
[22] I would say that between the inspiration of Francis and the
Catharian doctrines there is an irreconcilable opposition; but
it would not be difficult to find acts and words of his which
recall the contempt for matter of the Cathari; for example, his
way of treating his body. Some of his counsels to the friars:
_Unusquisque habet in potestate sua inimicum suum videlicit
corpus, per quod peccat._ Assisi MS. 338, folio 20b. Conform.
138, b. 2.--_Cum majorem inimicum corpore non habeam._ 2 Cel.,
3, 63. These are momentary but inevitable obscurations, moments
of forgetfulness, of discouragement, when a man is not himself,
and repeats mechanically what he hears said around him. The real
St. Francis is, on the contrary, the lover of nature, he who
sees in the whole creation the work of divine goodness, the
radiance of the eternal beauty, he who, in the Canticle of the
Creatures, sees in the body not the Enemy but a brother: _Cæpit
hilariter loqui ad corpus; Gaude, frater corpus._ 2 Cel., 3,
137.
[23] _Quodam die, dicta fabrissa dixit ipsi testi prægnanti,
quod rogaret Deum, ut liberaret eam a Dæmone, quem habebat in
ventre ... Gulielmus dixit quod ita magnum peccatum erat jacere
cum uxore sua quam cum concubina._ Döllinger, _loc. cit._, pp.
24, 35.
[24] Those of the _Concorrezenses_ and _Bajolenses_. In Italy
_Cathari_ becomes _Gazzari_; for that matter, each country had
its special appellatives; one of the most general in the north
was that of the _Bulgari_, which marks the oriental origin of
the sect, whence the slang term Boulgres and its derivatives
(vide Matthew Paris, ann. 1238). Cf. Schmit, _Histoire des
Cathares_, 8vo, 2 vols, Paris, 1849.
[25] The most current name in Italy was that of the _Patarini_,
given them no doubt from their inhabiting the quarter of
second-hand dealers in Milan: _la contrada dei Patari_, found in
many cities. _Patari!_ is still the cry of the ragpickers in the
small towns of Provence. In the thirteenth century Patarino and
Catharo were synonyms. But before that the term Patarini had an
entirely different sense. See the very remarkable study of M.
Felice Tocco on this subject in his _Eresia net medio evo_,
12mo, Florence, 1884.
[26] Cesar von Heisterbach, _Dial. mirac._, t. i., p. 309,
Strange's edition.
[27] _Innocentii opera_, Migne, t. i., col. 537; t. ii., 654.
[28] _Computruistis in peccatis sicut jumenta in stercore suo ut
fumus ac fimus putrefactionis vestræ jam fere circumadjacentes
regionis infecerit, ac ipsum Dominum ut credimus ad nauseam
provocaverit._ _Loc. cit._, col. 654. Cf. 673; Potthast, 2532,
2539.
[29] _Gesta Innocentii_, Migne, t. i., col. clxii. Cf. _epist._
viii., 85 and 105.
[30] Campi, _Historia Ecclesiastica di Piacenza_, parte ii., p.
92 ff. Cf. _Innoc., epist._ ix., 131, 166-169; x., 54, 64, 222.
[31] A. SS., Maii, t. v., p. 87.
[32] Bull of June 6, 1205, Potthast, 2237; Migne, vii., 83. This
Cardinal Leo (of the presbyterial title of Holy Cross of
Jerusalem) was one most valued by Innocent III. To him and
Ugolini, the future Gregory IX., he at this epoch confided the
most delicate missions (for example, in 1209, they were named
legates to Otho IV.). This embassy shows in what importance the
pope held the affairs of Assisi, though it was a very small
city.
[33] Not once do we find him fighting heretics. The early
Dominicans, on the contrary, are incessantly occupied with
arguing. See 2 Cel., 3, 46.
[34] It need not be said that I do not assert that no trace of
it is to be found after the ministry of St. Francis, but it was
no longer a force, and no longer endangered the very existence
of the Church.
[35] This strange personality will charm historians and
philosophers for a long while to come. I know nothing more
learned or more luminous than M. Felice Tocco's fine study in
his _Eresia nel medio evo_, Florence, 1884, 1 vol., 12mo, pp.
261-409.
[36] A. SS., Sept., t. vii., p. 283 ff.
[37] A. SS., Maii, vii.; Vincent de Beauvais, _Speculum
historiale_, _lib._ 29, _cap._ 40. La Sila is a wooded mountain,
situated eastward from Cosenza, which the peasants call _Monte
Nero_. The summits are nearly 2,000 metres above the sea.
[38] Toward 1195. Gioacchino died there, March 30, 1202.
[39] A whole apochryphal literature has blossomed out around
Gioacchino; certain hypercritics have tried to prove that he
never wrote anything. These are exaggerations. Three large works
are certainly authentic: _The Agreement of the Old and New
Testaments_, _The Commentary on the Apocalypse_, and _The
Psaltery of Ten Strings_, published in Venice, the first in
1517, the two others in 1527. His prophecies were so well known,
even in his lifetime, that an English Cistercian, Rudolph, Abbot
of Coggeshall ([Cross] 1228), coming to Rome in 1195, sought a
conference with him and has left us an interesting account of
it. Martène, _Amplissima Collectio_, t. v., p. 839.
[40] _Comm. in apoc._, folio 78, b. 2.
[41] _Qui vere monachus est nihil reputat esse suum nisi
citharam:_ Apoc., ib., folio 183. a. 2.
[42] E. Roth, _Die Visionen der heiligen Elisabeth von Schönau_:
Brünn, 1884, pp. 115-117.
* * * * *