having stript themselves of all temporal wealth, as absolutely as their leader, they assumed his austere dress, and avowed themselves his disciples.

A great event had happened in an unconscious world. Though but three had thus met together, yet the order of Minorites or Franciscan brethren was constituted. Six centuries have since passed away; and it still flourishes, one of the elements of life, if not of progress, in the great Christian commonwealth.

arms of Francis extended to either end of the world, while a golden cross reached from his lips to heaven-with four other worthies, of whom history has preserved only the names, followed the steps of the mystic Egidius. In the dilapidated hut of Rivo Torto, twelve poor men had now assembled. To a common observer they might have passed for the beggar king and his tattered crew. To the leader himself they appeared, more justly, an image of the brotherhood of which the patriarchal family had been the type, and the apostolic college the antitype.

The grain of mustard-seed soon began to germinate. Francis, Bernard, and Peter retired together to a hut in the centre of the The morning had dawned over the hills plain of Rivo Torto; so called from a ser- from which the Rivo Torto flows, and long pentine stream which wanders through it. had been the prayer of Francis, when rising With what authority the founder ruled even from his knees, he called his brethren round these, his first followers, may be inferred him, and thus addressed them. "Take from the fact (attested by the usual evidence) courage, and shelter yourselves in God. Be that after the death of Peter, such prodigies not depressed to think how few we are. Be of healing were wrought at his tomb, as not alarmed either at your own weakness, or much disturbed the devout retirement of his at mine. God has revealed to me, that He surviving friends. "Brother Peter, you al- will diffuse through the earth this our little ways obeyed me implicitly when you were family, of which He is himself the Father. alive," at length exclaimed the much per-I would have concealed what I have seen, plexed Francis-"I expect from you a simi- but love constrains me to impart it to you. lar submission now. The visitors to your I have seen a great multitude coming to us, tomb annoy us sadly. In the name of holy to wear our dress, to live as we do. I have obedience I command you to work no more seen all the roads crowded with men travelmiracles." Peter at once dutifully desistedling in eager haste towards us. from his posthumous works of mercy. "So obedient," observes M. Chavin de Malan, writing in this nineteenth century, "were the family of Francis even after death."

At Rivo Torto, Egidius, another rich citizen of Assisi, sought out and joined the new society. Famous for many graces, and for not a few miracles, he is especially celebra ted for having received at Perugia a visit from St. Louis in disguise, when the two saints long knelt together in silence, embracing each other, so as to bring their hearts into the closest possible contiguity. On the departure of the King, Egidius was rebuked by his brethren for his rudeness, in saying not a word to so great a sovereign. "Marvel not," he answered, "that we did not speak. A divine light laid bare to each of us the heart of the other. No words could have intelligibly expressed that language of the soul, or have imparted the same sacred consolation. So impotent is the tongue of man to utter divine mysteries."

The French are coming. The Spaniards are hastening. The English and the Germans are running. All nations are mingling together. I hear the tread of the numbers who go and come to execute the commands of holy obedience. We seem contemptible and insane. fear not.

But

Believe that our Saviour, who has overcome the world, will speak effectually in us. If gold should lie in our way, let us value it as the dust beneath our feet. We will not, however, condemn or despise the rich who live softly, and are arrayed sumptuously. God, who is our master, is theirs also. But go and preach repentance for the remission of sins. Faithful men, gentle, and full of charity, will receive you and your words with joy. Proud and impious men will condemn and oppose you. Settle it in your hearts to endure all things with meakness and patience. The wise and the noble will soon join themselves to you, and, with you, will preach to kings, to princes, and to nations. Be patient in tribulation, fervent in prayer, fearless in labor, and the kingdom of God, which endures for ever, shall be your reward."

Sabbatini, of whom we read only that he was vir bonus et rectus-Morico, a crusader, who had been miraculously cured by the prayers of Francis-John de Capella, "who Such, we are assured by his three comlike another Judas hanged himself at last"-panions, was the inaugural discourse of Sylvester, who, in a dream, had seen the Francis to his disciples. Then drawing on

the earth on which he stood a figure of the, traversing with slow and measured steps its cross, each limb of which was turned to one lofty terrace, then called "the Mirror," as if of the four cardinal points of the compass, afraid to overtake him who preceded them and arranging his companions in the four in a dress studiously simple, and with a corresponding lines, he dismissed each of countenance wrapt in earnest meditation. them with the solemn benediction-" Cast Unruffled by passion, and yet elate with thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall conscious power, that eagle eye, and those nourish thee." The new missionaries de- capacious brows, announced Him the lord of parted to their work of mercy, and Francis a dominion which might have satisfied at himself retired to the solitude of the hut of Rivo Torto.

once the pride of Diogenes and the ambition of Alexander. Since the Tugurium was built on the Capitoline, no greater monarch had ever called the seven hills his own. But in his Pontificate no æra had occurred more arduous than that in which Innocent the Third saw the mendicants of Assisi prostrate themselves at his feet.

In that retirement an arduous duty awaited him. He drew up there, in twenty-three chapters, the rule of his new monastic order, "the Magna Charta of Poverty." It did not essentially differ from the similar institutes of the Benedictines. To the vows of chastity and obedience, was however to be added a Twelve years had elapsed since his elevasolemn vow of Poverty. His brethren were tion to the Pontifical throne. In that period to labor with their hands, and were to be he had converted into realities the most aumaintained by alms. But they were to so- dacious visions of Hildebrand. He had exlicit alms, not as suitors for a gratuitous fa- acted the oath of fealty to himself from all vor, but as assertors of a positive right, the Imperial officers of the city. He had which Christ himself had bestowed on the seized on the marches of Ancona and Umpoor. A code of higher authority than any bria. He had annulled the election of human laws, had imposed on the rich the Frederick, the infant son of the deceased office, and the obligations, of stewards for Emperor, and as Vicar of Christ on earth, such as had need of sustenance. The indi- had substituted for him the young Otho of gent were the real proprietors of all earthly Brunswick, whom he afterwards excommutreasures. The food on which Dives fared nicated. He had laid France under an insumptuously, belonged of right to Lazarus; and Dives could acquire an equal title to be fed, only by lying, in his turn, a beggar at the gate.

terdict to punish the divorce of Philip Augustus. He had given away the crowns of Bohemia and Bulgaria. He had received homage from John for the crown of England; and, availing himself of Count Baldwin's capture of Constantinople, he had become the arbiter of the fortunes of the Eastern Empire. So far all had been triumphant. But dark clouds had now arisen, which may well be supposed to have shaped and colored the evening reverie of this great conqueror, when it was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Francis and his companions.

A doctrine always so welcome to the great body of mankind, could never have been announced with a surer prospect of a wide and cordial acceptance, than in the commencement of the thirteenth century. But the establishment in the church of a polity thus democratic, seemed no easy enterprise. The sanction of him who wore the Triple Crown, could, it seemed, be scarcely expected for an institute so mena- The interruption was as unwelcome as it cing to all sovereigns, whether secular or was abrupt. As he gazed at the squalid spiritual. Yet without that sanction, the dress and faces of his strange suitors, and founder might become an heresiarch as observed their bare and unwashed feet, his guilty as Peter Waldo, and his followers lip curled with disdain, and, sternly comobnoxious to punishments as terrible as those manding them to withdraw, he seemed again of the Albigenses. It was in the summer to retire from the outer world into some of of the year 1210 that Francis, accompanied the deep recesses of that capacious mind. by two or three of his disciples, made a pilgrimage to Rome, to propitiate, if possible, to these startling novelties, the formidable potentate who then bore the keys and the sword of Peter.

The splendid palace of the Lateran reflected the rays of the evening sun as the wayworn travellers approached it. A group of churchmen in sumptuous apparel were

Francis and his companions betook themselves to prayer; Innocent to his couch. There (says the legend) he dreamed that a palm-tree sprouted up from the ground between his feet, and swiftly shooting up into the heavens, cast her boughs on every side, a shelter from the heat and a refreshment to the weary. The vision of the night (so proceeds the tale) dictated the policy of the

morning, and assured Innocent that, under his fostering care, the Franciscan Palm would strike deep her roots, and expand her foliage on every side, in the vineyard of the church.

Never, however, was there a time when the councils of Rome were less under the influence of narcotics of any kind. It must have been in the vigils, not in the slumbers, of the night, that the Pontiff revolved the incidents of the preceding evening, and perceived their full significance. Yet why deliberate at all when it is impossible to err? Infallibility should advance to truth by one free intuitive bound, not hobbling on the crutches of inquiry and inference. It is among the mysteries which we are bound to revere in silence, that, whether in solitude or in synods, the inspired wisdom of Rome has always groped its way by the aid of human reasonings. No record remains of those which now governed the resolves of Innocent; but an obvious conjecture may supply them.

Flagellants, Publicani, and Waldenses, or grouped together under the general term of Albigenses, they rejected the sacraments of marriage and penance, and disbelieved the magical influence of baptism and the eucharist. They denied the lawfulness of oaths and of capital punishments. They maintained that no Divine ordinance was valid if administered by a priest in mortal sin. They taught that the successors of the Apostles were bound to succeed to the apostolic poverty; and since none so well fulfilled that hereditary obligation as themselves, they thought that none were equally well entitled to discharge the apostolic office.

To refute these errors, Rome had employed her most irrefragable arguments; the bitter curses of Lucius; the cruelties, beyond conception horrible, of Innocent. The brand, the scourge, and the sword, had fallen from the wearied hands of the ministers of his vengeance. Hundreds were cast alive into the furnace, and not a few plunged into the flames with exulting declarations of the faith for which they perished. The Vicar of Christ bathed the banner of the cross in a carnage, from which the wolves of Romulus, and the eagles of Cæsar, would have turned away with loathing. But the will of the sufferers was indomitable, and this new scourge of God was constrained to feel, that, from conquests which left the immortal spirit unsubdued, he could derive no effectual security, and no enduring triumph.

The great traditional maxim of the Papal dynasty has ever been, to direct the tendencies of each succeeding age, by grasping and controlling the springs of action from which the spirit of each successively derives its mould, and form, and fashion. From every province of his spiritual empire, had recently reached the Pontiff tidings of the appearance and rapid diffusion of a spirit full of menace to all thrones, and urgently demanding subjugation. It might be called the fraternizing spirit. It manifested itself Such was the menacing aspect which in the creation of brotherhoods as barriers Christendom presented to her sacerdotal against despotism, both feudal and ecclesi- head at the moment, when, after having astical. In all the chief cities of Europe, first repulsed, he again summoned to his the merchants, citizens, and workmen, were presence, the mendicants of Assisi. The forming themselves into guilds, and electing other monastic orders formed so many ramtheir own syndics and magistrates. Already parts round his throne. But neither the might be discerned the active germs of the Benedictines with their splendid endowgreat commercial commonwealths of Flo- ments, nor the Carthusians with their selfrence, Pisa, and Genoa; of Frankfurt, immolations, nor the Cistertians in their stuGhent, and Bruges; of Hamburgh, Lubeck, dious solitudes, nor the Templars or Hospiand of Bremen; and those of the no less tallers with their sharp swords, nor the Begreat commercial corporations of London, guines and Maturins with their half-secular Bristol, and Norwich. Still more numerous pursuits, could oppose any effective weapons were the religious associations which, in to the migratory gospellers, who in every one vast, though incoherent alliance, op- land toiled and preached and died, at once posed the pride and luxury of their spiritual the martyrs and the devoted antagonists of lords. From the Guadalquiver to the Elbe -from the Thames to the Tiber-swarms of such socialists practised, or seemed to practise, extreme austerities, and inculcated doctrines abhorred of the orthodox and the faithful. Obscurely distinguished from each other as Patarins, Cathari, BonsHommes, Poor men of Lyons, Josephins,

his power. It was, then, in no dreaming phantasy, but in open vision, that the palmtree sprung up between his feet, a new and a welcome shelter. The fervid speech, the resolved aspect, the lowly demeanor, the very dirt and wretchedness of those squalid vagrants, gave to that penetrating eye assurance of a devotedness which might rival

and eclipse, and, perhaps, persuade those ever extravagant, is refused by mankind to whom Simon de Montfort had in vain at- a will at once inflexible and triumphant; so tempted to exterminate. And as, in later great is the reverence unconsciously renderdays, Aristotelian innovations were neutra-ed, even by the least reflecting, to the great lized by scholastic subtleties ;-the all-mystery of our nature;-the existence in emancipating press by the soul-subduing man of volitions and of resolves not absorbmiracles of art;-the impassioned revolt of ed in the Supreme Will, but, in some enigLuther by the ardent allegiance of Loyola: matic sense, distinct from it. The simple-so now the ill-organized confederacy of hearted Francis had a readier solution. Western Europe might be counteracted by "They honor God," he exclaimed, “in a zeal as impetuous as their own, but more the vilest of his creatures." Whatever efficient when guided by the unerring saga- may have been the motive of the donors, city of the Roman conclave. The popular the fact is certain, that on his return from watchwords of Poverty, Continence, Lowli- Rome, the spouse of Poverty received for ness, and Self-denial, would no longer be the use of his spiritual offspring a formal used only as reproaches on the Roman hie- grant of the church of St. Mary-of-Angels, rarchy, but as the war-cry of the self- or the Porzioncula, which his pious zeal mortified adherents of Rome. Her enthu- had reinstated. siastic missionaries, commanding the sympa- Among the saints of the Roman calendar, thy of the multitude, would direct it in holy few enjoy a more exalted renown than St. indignation against the vices of the mitre Clare, a scion of the noble house of Ortoand the coronet, but in pious loyalty to- lona. "Clara," so runs the bull of her canowards the tiara, which had rested for a thou-nization, "claris præclara meritis, magnæ in sand years on the brows of the successors of cœlo claritate gloriæ, ac in terra miraculoPeter. rum sublimium, clare claret." Even before With such prescience, Innocent recalled her birth a voice from heaven had announcthe youth whose first overtures he had con-ed that her course of life was to be a briltemptuously rejected. He now accepted liant one, and at the instance of her mother, them, cordially indeed, yet with characteris- to whom the promise had been addresstic caution. The laws of the proposed order of Minorites were examined, discussed, and approved. Heedless of the sinister predictions of the Sacred College, the Pope was willing to recognize, in the severity of their discipline, the perfection which Christ himself requires; and Francis, having plighted solemn vows of obedience, and having received in turn a no less solemn apostolic blessing, departed from the Lateran with an unwritten approbation of his rule.

ed, she therefore received at the baptismal fount the significant name on which, after her death, Pope Alexander the Fourth was to play this jingle. From her childhood she had justified the appellation. Beneath her costly robes, and the jewels which adorned them, she wore the penitential girdle; and vain were the efforts of countless suitors to win a heart already devoted to the heavenly Bridgroom. The fame of her piety reached the ears of Francis. She admired the lustre of his sanctity. The mutual attraction was Inflamed with holy ardor for the conver- felt and acknowledged. They met, confersion of men, and for the defence of the for- red, and met again. By his advice, an elopetress and centre of the Catholic faith, he re- ment from the house of her parents was arturned to his native city. His toilsome ranged, and by his assistance it was effected. march was a genuine ovation. His steps They fled to the Porzioncula. Monks, were followed by admiring crowds; church chanting their matins by torch-light, rebells rang out their peals at his approach; ceived and welcomed her there; and then, processions, chanting solemn litanies ad- attended by her spiritual guide, she took vanced to meet him; enraptured devotees sanctuary in the neighboring church of St. kissed his clothes, his hands, his feet; pro- Paul until arrangements could be made for selytes of either sex, and every rank and her reception in a convent. The heroine of age, repeated the vows of poverty, conti- the romance was in her nineteenth, the hero nence, obedience, and labor; and as the in his thirtieth year. Yet she was not an words passed from mouth to mouth, other Eloisa, but only one of those young ladies vows mingled with them, devoting lands, (all good angels guard them!) by whom convents, and monasteries, to the use of the ether of sacerdotal eloquence cannot be those whose abandonment of all worldly safely inhaled in private. He was not an wealth was thus enthusiastically celebrated. Abelard, but only one of those ghostly Superb inconsistency! No homage, how-counsellors (all good angels avert them!)

1847.]

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

To

The answers of the who would conduct souls to heaven by the, momentous question. breach of the earliest and most sacred of the hermit and the abbess were the same. duties which He who reigns there, has laid each it had been revealed that the founder Such, indeed, was the superiority of their order should go forth and preach. upon us. of Francis to any prejudice in favor of God, they assured him, would put words filial obedience and parental authority, that into his mouth. To receive the joint mesdespite the agony and rage of her father, sage he knelt on the earth, his head bare and the efforts of his armed retainers, he in- and bowed down, his hands crossed over his duced her two sisters, Agnes and Beatrice, breast. On hearing it he vaulted from the to follow her flight and to partake of her se-ground, crying, "Let us go forth in the name clusion. The shears which severed the of the Lord!" At his first appearance as a clustering locks of Agnes, were held, we preacher, burning eloquence burst from his are assured, by his own consecrated hands. lips, diseases fled at his touch, sinners abanSo bewitching an example was, of course, doned their vices, and crowds flocked into fatal to many other flowing tresses, and to his order. Every day witnessed the increase the serenity of the heads they covered. The of the numbers and zeal of his proselytes; church of St. Damiano, which the zeal of and on the 30th of May, 1216, a goodly comFrancis had reconstructed, became the con- pany, constituting the first chapter of the Monks order of the Minor brethren, had assembled vent of the order of poor sisters. cannot cease to be men; and, in their silent at the Porzioncula. cells, the hearts of the Minor brethren throbbed to learn that their cravings for woman's sympathy were thus, at least, partially satisfied. Under the guidance of the ladies of the house of Ortolana, and the legislation of their common founder, colonies of this devout sisterhood were rapidly settled in all the chief cities of Europe and Clara, the disobedient and the devout, being elected the first abbess of the order, performed miracles of self-conquest in her lifetime, and miracles of mercy in the tomb.

:

This convention was rendered memorable in their annals by the apportionment which was then made of the Christian world into so many Franciscan missions. For himself, the founder reserved the kingdom of France, as the noblest and most arduous province. Tuscany, Lombardy, Provence, Spain, and Germany were assigned to five of his principal followers. Such were now their numbers that thirty-four departed for Provence, and no less than sixty found their way to the Empire. The land of the Ghibellines, the future birth-place of Luther, formed, however, even in the 13th century, an exception to the welcome with which, in other parts of Europe, these new emissaries of Rome were enthusiastically received. Of the itinerants along the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, not one could make himself intelligible in the German tongue. Destitute of the ever ready resource of miracle (it is difficult to conjecture why), they could not convince a people with whom they could not communicate, and were driven away with ridicule and outrage.

At the summit of his hopes, Francis surveyed the path which yet lay before him; and his spirit fainted at the prospect. Renown, influence, supremacy, had gathered round him, and his soul was oppressed with the responsibilities of trusts so weighty, and for the use of which he was wholly unprepared by any literary or theological education. In words which he ascribes to Francis himself, St. Bonaventura depicts the conflict of his mind on the grave question, whether, by a life of solitary devotion, or by a life of apostolic labors, he should best The French mission received a yet more fulfil the Divine counsels. If the quotation of his language be accurate, it is evident unexpected check. To place this great unthat he inclined to the more active choice, dertaking under the special care of St. Peter but dreaded to oppose to the wisdom of his and St. Paul, Francis commenced his jourage the foolishness of such preaching as his ney by visiting their sepulchres. Rome had untaught mind, and unpractised tongue, at that time received another, not less memocould utter. If the difficulty itself is char-rable, guest, since known in the calendar of acteristic of him, the escape from it is still the saints by the name of Dominick. He was a Spaniard, the member of a noble Silvester, one of his associates at the Rivo house, a man of letters, and a priest. Amid Torto, still remained in the adjacent moun- the horrors of the crusade against the Albitains, a hermit absorbed in devotion. To genes, and while himself deeply stained with him, and to Clara, Francis despatched'in- that blood-guiltiness, he had preached rejunctions to ascertain what was the pleasure pentance, and inculcated orthodoxy. And of the great Head of the Church on this now, a sojourner in the metropolis of Chris

more so.