Religion: Core of Potency

Seven hundred years ago died in Assisi a man called Francis. Little things suffice to remind men of great, and the coincidence that makes the number 1226 resemble the number 1926 was enough to set Benito Mussolini, that wise man, pondering upon the life and works of St. Francis of Assisi. Economy, piety, charity, simplicity, loyalty—these, and other bulking labels which people have tagged onto the man Francis, and which tradition stipulates for the order of Friars which he founded, appealed to Benito Mussolini as virtues that would well become the nation of Italy in his consulship. He proclaimed* St. Francis the patron saint of Fascism, and appointed the year from September, 1926 to September, 1927 as a year, of “Franciscanism.” There was an imposing torchlight procession at Assisi and many a high mass in the ravaged old Church of the Aracoeli. The King dedicated a new road to the stony hole where Francis lived for a while at La Verna, and the Fascist Government —in the person of the Minister of Public Instruction, Signor Fedele —marched through the streets of Assisi. Donna Tittoni, wife of the president of the Senate, heads a committee to design simple fashions for women. Imported luxuries are forbidden. Passports will be refused, during the Franciscan year, for any travel for pleasure outside the country. The nation is asked to suffer cold that the consumption of coal may be limited. Just what these manifestations of national parsimony and party politics have to do with dead Jack Bernardone nobody has quite made clear.

That was his name. According to one story, which has the smell of truth, he was never christened Francis; his friends called him Francis for a nickname, as you might say “Frenchy” or “Frog,” because of his madness for French poetry, French amour, French cooking. He could play the sackbut and he sang, in a voice not very even, but bright and moving, the songs of the trouvères. For the rest he was thin, fastidiously jeweled, ingenuous rather than witty, and supremely gay. His father, Pietro Bernardone, a substantial citizen, was banner-bearer of the guild of the cloth merchants of Assisi.

Bernardone, the father, permitted himself only once to display the irritation which his son’s behavior had so often occasioned. As a rule he accepted Jack’s madcapery with an indulgent “Tschik”; with the Signora he often delayed in his shop discussing how Jack wasted his days lounging and singing beside fountains, how he rebounded from one girl to another, above all how he spent money— wasting it, throwing it away in pursefuls. “More like some prince than our son,” said the mother in despair; but the father had not even objected when Jack rode off to war, preposterously martial, on a gelded roan. Early in the campaign Jack got a fever; he came home before the rest, yellow and thinner, with huge eyes. He could not sleep well now; Pietro Bernardone would hear him tossing on his bed (he lay on the top floor) and sometimes crying aloud, in a voice harsh with dream. Yes, Pietro Bernardone had been worried about his son. But now he was angry. . . .

They stood in the hallway of the bishop of their diocese—young Jack and Bernardone and the bishop. At their feet was a parcel of rich woven-stuffs, linen and cloth of gold, a silver altar cloth, a sword-belt. The bishop, brown and quiet, was explaining something, half-humorously, to Pietro Bernardone; the merchant seemed too angry to hear him. Had he ever denied his son anything? Why, Jack’s friends called him Francis because of his rich ways. And now to turn thief. If Jack had asked he would have given him that bundle of gewgaws. But to run off with them to give them to the Church—bah! A vision, did the bishop say? The bishop would make him give the goods back? Visions like that would land a boy in the lockup. . . .

But then both turned to look at Francis. With slow, accustomed motions the boy was taking off his clothes. He tossed the last garment onto the pile at their feet. “Up to this time,” he said, “I have called Pietro Bernardone father; now I will serve only my Father in Heaven.” He went out, clad in a bit of sackcloth, through the door. It was winter. Frost blackened the orange trees. They say that he was singing.

How in the praise of God he put away the comforts of man’s life is known to all, but who can tell what spirit prompted him, what spirits battled in his ghostly heart? Surely, when he tossed in the attic at Assisi, a voice spoke to him, and whether this voice spoke from his own heart or from the rayless ceiling overhead makes little difference in the long run. He went out into the frost; presently he was joined by a wealthy citizen named Bernard of Quintaville and a canon from a neighboring church named Peter. These three built themselves a hut adjoining the leper hospital. Lepers he had loathed unspeakably. But perfect love had cast out loathing: it was on the road from Apulia. He jumped from his horse and embraced a leper. “He receives,” said a Cardinal, “those whom God himself will not receive. …” So he lived in hunger among rocks, trees, beasts. The birds, knowing his gentle heart, came close to him. Often he preached to them, and once, as his congregation flew away, it was seen that their innumerable wings made the pattern of a cross upon the sky.

He begged for his food and clothes. From what was offered him he took the worst. A peasant gave him an old tunic; he tied a piece of rope about his waist; ten years later that costume was the uniform of 5,000 men.* But even the order that he founded, whose members he exhorted to charity and abstinence, was an order of service as well as prayer; Francis of Assisi renounced society; he never renounced man. In the cold wilderness the songs of the troubadours rose to his lips; wandering in the forests he sang his Canticle of the Sun, calling Fire his brother, gay and fierce and strong, and Water his sister, pure and clear and inviolate. Somehow he had won his way to the secret core of potency, of happiness; like Christ in Galilee he seemed, proclaiming God, to proclaim life. It is not true that he abjured all luxury. He kept about him one rag of splendor: the manners of a king. “I am dying,” cried a little friar who flinched under the fasts. “You may eat,” said Francis, and lest the weak brother be shamed he insisted that the rest should eat with him. When he heard of a girl who wanted to join a convent against the wishes of her family he helped her to run away.

Her name was Clare. She was the 17-year-old daughter of a nobleman of Assisi; she founded a holy order for women, was canonized after her death like Francis, whom she had loved all her life. Many writers have told of the love of these two people, but only one with a beauty worthy of his theme—the medieval clerk who tells about the shadow of the fire. High in the west sky it was seen, a white moving glow like the reflection of an enormous conflagration, but when the peasants came running with mattocks and wild faces to see what building had burned down, they found only Francis and Clare, eating together, and talking about the love of God. Soon another fire visited Francis in the shape of a white iron on his eyeballs, for he was going blind. Renaissance surgeons knew few remedies. They brought a seething cautery, he spoke to the fire: “God made you beautiful; I pray you be courteous with me.” Before he died he saw, he received, on Mount Alverno, the revelation that is known as the Stigmata.

This revelation occurred on Alverno of the Apennines. Francis owned this mountain. A gentleman named Orlando of Chiusi, who had great lands in Tuscany, had given it to him. He went there for his last fast. Looking into the sky, he saw the sun darkened, the clouds blotted out by a terrible, immense, anguished, and lovely person—was it a seraph, or archangel? He could not tell, but at the sight his body grew weak with pity and grief for he saw that this person, blemishless, was crucified, his head and wings stretched over heaven on a cross. The vision faded; night swam into the sky; and looking down Saint Francis saw the marks of nails in his own hands.

*Of course without ecclesiastical authority so to do. Pope Pius XI had already decreed special observance of the septocentenary, had termed St. Francis, “A second Jesus Christ” (TIME, June 28).

*A century later the uniform became Dante’s shroud.