,transcriber's ,note3 ,obvious printer errors have been corrected4 ,hyphenation has been rationalised4 ,small capitals have been replaced by full capitals4 ,italics are indicated by underscores4 ,a list of other books from the same publisher1 and a preface to them1 have been moved to the end of the book4 ,,st4 ,,francis ,,of ,,assisi ,,by ,g4 ,k4 ,,chesterton ,illustration3 ,h,s ,,hodder ,,and ,,stoughton ,,ltd4 ,,london ,,toronto ,contents ,,page ,,chapter ,i ,,the ,,problem ,,of ,,st4 ,,francis #g ,,chapter ,,ii ,,the ,,world ,,st4 ,,francis ,,found #ah ,,chapter ,,iii ,,francis ,,the ,,fighter #dj ,,chapter ,,iv ,,francis ,,the ,,builder #eh ,,chapter ,v ,,le ,,jongleur ,,de ,,dieu #gd ,,chapter ,,vi ,,the ,,little ,,poor ,,man #id ,,chapter ,,vii ,,the ,,three ,,orders #aac ,,chapter ,,viii ,,the ,,mirror ,,of ,,christ #acc ,,chapter ,,ix ,,miracles ,,and ,,death #aec ,,chapter ,x ,,the ,,testament ,,of ,,st4 ,,francis #agb ,chapter ,i ,the ,problem of ,st4 ,francis ,a sketch of ,st4 ,francis of ,assisi in modern ,english may be written in one of three ways4 ,between these the writer must make his selection2 and the third way1 which is adopted here1 is in some respects the most difficult of all4 ,at least1 it would be the most difficult if the other two were not impossible4 ,first1 he may deal with this great and most amazing man as a figure in secular history and a model of social virtues4 ,he may describe this divine demagogue as being1 as he probably was1 the world's one quite sincere democrat4 ,he may say 7what means very little7 that ,st4 ,francis was in advance of his age4 ,he may say 7what is quite true7 that ,st4 ,francis anticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the modern mood2 the love of nature2 the love of animals2 the sense of social compassion2 the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity and even of property4 ,all those things that nobody understood before ,wordsworth were familiar to ,st4 ,francis4 ,all those things that were first discovered by ,tolstoy had been taken for granted by ,st4 ,francis4 ,he could be presented1 not only as a human but a humanitarian hero2 indeed as the first hero of humanism4 ,he has been described as a sort of morning star of the ,renaissance4 ,and in comparison with all these things1 his ascetical theology can be ignored or dismissed as a contemporary accident1 which was fortunately not a fatal accident4 ,his religion can be regarded as a superstition1 but an inevitable superstition1 from which not even genius could wholly free itself2 in the consideration of which it would be unjust to condemn ,st4 ,francis for his self-denial or unduly chide him for his chastity4 ,it is quite true that even from so detached a standpoint his stature would still appear heroic4 ,there would still be a great deal to be said about the man who tried to end the ,crusades by talking to the ,saracens or who interceded with the ,emperor for the birds4 ,the writer might describe in a purely historical spirit the whole of that great ,franciscan inspiration that was felt in the painting of ,giotto1 in the poetry of ,dante1 in the miracle plays that made possible the modern drama1 and in so many other things that are already appreciated by the modern culture4 ,he may try to do it1 as others have done1 almost without raising any religious question at all4 ,in short1 he may try to tell the story of a saint without ,god2 which is like being told to write the life of ,nansen and forbidden to mention the ,north ,pole4 ,second1 he may go to the opposite extreme1 and decide1 as it were1 to be defiantly devotional4 ,he may make the theological enthusiasm as thoroughly the theme as it was the theme of the first ,franciscans4 ,he may treat religion as the real thing that it was to the real ,francis of ,assisi4 ,he can find an austere joy1 so to speak1 in parading the paradoxes of asceticism and all the holy topsy-turvydom of humility4 ,he can stamp the whole history with the ,stigmata1 record fasts like fights against a dragon2 till in the vague modern mind ,st4 ,francis is as dark a figure as ,st4 ,dominic4 ,in short he can produce what many in our world will regard as a sort of photographic negative1 the reversal of all lights and shades2 what the foolish will find as impenetrable as darkness and even many of the wise will find almost as invisible as if it were written in silver upon white4 ,such a study of ,st4 ,francis would be unintelligible to anyone who does not share his religion1 perhaps only partly intelligible to anyone who does not share his vocation4 ,according to degrees of judgment1 it will be regarded as something too bad or too good for the world4 ,the only difficulty about doing the thing in this way is that it cannot be done4 ,it would really require a saint to write the life of a saint4 ,in the present case the objections to such a course are insuperable4 ,third1 he may try to do what ,i have tried to do here2 and1 as ,i have already suggested1 the course has peculiar problems of its own4 ,the writer may put himself in the position of the ordinary modern outsider and enquirer2 as indeed the present writer is still largely and was once entirely in that position4 ,he may start from the standpoint of a man who already admires ,st4 ,francis1 but only for those things which such a man finds admirable4 ,in other words he may assume that the reader is at least as enlightened as ,renan or ,matthew ,arnold2 but in the light of that enlightenment he may try to illuminate what ,renan and ,matthew ,arnold left dark4 ,he may try to use what is understood to explain what is not understood4 ,he may say to the modern ,english reader3 ,here is an historical character which is admittedly attractive to many of us already1 by its gaiety1 its romantic imagination1 its spiritual courtesy and camaraderie1 but which also contains elements 7evidently equally sincere and emphatic7 which seem to you quite remote and repulsive4 ,but after all1 this man was a man and not half a dozen men4 ,what seems inconsistency to you did not seem inconsistency to him4 ,let us see whether we can understand1 with the help of the existing understanding1 these other things that seem now to be doubly dark1 by their intrinsic gloom and their ironic contrast4 ,i do not mean1 of course1 that ,i can really reach such a psychological completeness in this crude and curt outline4 ,but ,i mean that this is the only controversial condition that ,i shall here assume2 that ,i am dealing with the sympathetic outsider4 ,i shall not assume any more or any less agreement than this4 ,a materialist may not care whether the inconsistencies are reconciled or not4 ,a ,catholic may not see any inconsistencies to reconcile4 ,but ,i am here addressing the ordinary modern man1 sympathetic but sceptical1 and ,i can only rather hazily hope that1 by approaching the great saint's story through what is evidently picturesque and popular about it1 ,i may at least leave the reader understanding a little more than he did before of the consistency of a complete character2 that by approaching it in this way1 we may at least get a glimmering of why the poet who praised his lord the sun1 often hid himself in a dark cavern1 of why the saint who was so gentle with his ,brother the ,wolf was so harsh to his ,brother the ,ass 7as he nicknamed his own body71 of why the troubadour who said that love set his heart on fire separated himself from women1 of why the singer who rejoiced in the strength and gaiety of the fire deliberately rolled himself in the snow1 of why the very song which cries with all the passion of a pagan1 ,praised be ,god for our ,sister1 ,mother ,earth1 which brings forth varied fruits and grass and glowing flowers1 ends almost with the words ,praised be ,god for our ,sister1 the death of the body4 ,renan and ,matthew ,arnold failed utterly at this test4 ,they were content to follow ,francis with their praises until they were stopped by their prejudices2 the stubborn prejudices of the sceptic4 ,the moment ,francis began to do something they did not understand or did not like1 they did not try to understand it1 still less to like it2 they simply turned their backs on the whole business and walked no more with him4 ,no man will get any further along a path of historical enquiry in that fashion4 ,these sceptics are really driven to drop the whole subject in despair1 to leave the most simple and sincere of all historical characters as a mass of contradictions1 to be praised on the principle of the curate's egg4 ,arnold refers to the asceticism of ,alverno almost hurriedly1 as if it were an unlucky but undeniable blot on the beauty of the story2 or rather as if it were a pitiable break-down and bathos at the end of the story4 ,now this is simply to be stone-blind to the whole point of any story4 ,to represent ,mount ,alverno as the mere collapse of ,francis is exactly like representing ,mount ,calvary as the mere collapse of ,christ4 ,those mountains are mountains1 whatever else they are1 and it is nonsense to say 7like the ,red ,queen7 that they are comparative hollows or negative holes in the ground4 ,they were quite manifestly meant to be culminations and landmarks4 ,to treat the ,stigmata as a sort of scandal1 to be touched on tenderly but with pain1 is exactly like treating the original five wounds of ,jesus ,christ as five blots on ,his character4 ,you may dislike the idea of asceticism2 you may dislike equally the idea of martyrdom2 for that matter you may have an honest and natural dislike of the whole conception of sacrifice symbolised by the cross4 ,but if it is an intelligent dislike1 you will still retain the capacity for seeing the point of a story2 of the story of a martyr or even the story of a monk4 ,you will not be able rationally to read the ,gospel and regard the ,crucifixion as an afterthought or an anti-climax or an accident in the life of ,christ2 it is obviously the point of the story like the point of a sword1 the sword that pierced the heart of the ,mother of ,god4 ,and you will not be able rationally to read the story of a man presented as a ,mirror of ,christ without understanding his final phase as a ,man of ,sorrows1 and at least artistically appreciating the appropriateness of his receiving1 in a cloud of mystery and isolation1 inflicted by no human hand1 the unhealed everlasting wounds that heal the world4 ,the practical reconciliation of the gaiety and austerity ,i must leave the story itself to suggest4 ,but since ,i have mentioned ,matthew ,arnold and ,renan and the rationalistic admirers of ,st4 ,francis1 ,i will here give the hint of what it seems to me most advisable for such readers to keep in mind4 ,these distinguished writers found things like the ,stigmata a stumbling-block because to them a religion was a philosophy4 ,it was an impersonal thing2 and it is only the most personal passion that provides here an approximate earthly parallel4 ,a man will not roll in the snow for a stream of tendency by which all things fulfil the law of their being4 ,he will not go without food in the name of something1 not ourselves1 that makes for righteousness4 ,he will do things like this1 or pretty nearly like this1 under quite a different impulse4 ,he will do these things when he is in love4 ,the first fact to realise about ,st4 ,francis is involved in the first fact with which his story starts2 that when he said from the first that he was a ,troubadour1 and said later that he was a ,troubadour of a newer and nobler romance1 he was not using a mere metaphor1 but understood himself much better than the scholars understand him4 ,he was1 to the last agonies of asceticism1 a ,troubadour4 ,he was a ,lover4 ,he was a lover of ,god and he was really and truly a lover of men2 possibly a much rarer mystical vocation4 ,a lover of men is very nearly the opposite of a philanthropist2 indeed the pedantry of the ,greek word carries something like a satire on itself4 ,a philanthropist may be said to love anthropoids4 ,but as ,st4 ,francis did not love humanity but men1 so he did not love ,christianity but ,christ4 ,say1 if you think so1 that he was a lunatic loving an imaginary person2 but an imaginary person1 not an imaginary idea4 ,and for the modern reader the clue to the asceticism and all the rest can best be found in the stories of lovers when they seemed to be rather like lunatics4 ,tell it as the tale of one of the ,troubadours1 and the wild things he would do for his lady1 and the whole of the modern puzzle disappears4 ,in such a romance there would be no contradiction between the poet gathering flowers in the sun and enduring a freezing vigil in the snow1 between his praising all earthly and bodily beauty and then refusing to eat1 between his glorifying gold and purple and perversely going in rags1 between his showing pathetically a hunger for a happy life and a thirst for a heroic death4 ,all these riddles would easily be resolved in the simplicity of any noble love2 only this was so noble a love that nine men out of ten have hardly even heard of it4 ,we shall see later that this parallel of the earthly lover has a very practical relation to the problems of his life1 as to his relations with his father and with his friends and their families4 ,the modern reader will almost always find that if he could only feel this kind of love as a reality1 he could feel this kind of extravagance as a romance4 ,but ,i only note it here as a preliminary point because1 though it is very far from being the final truth in the matter1 it is the best approach to it4 ,the reader cannot even begin to see the sense of a story that may well seem to him a very wild one1 until he understands that to this great mystic his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love-affair4 ,and the only purpose of this prefatory chapter is to explain the limits of this present book2 which is only addressed to that part of the modern world which finds in ,st4 ,francis a certain modern difficulty2 which can admire him yet hardly accept him1 or which can appreciate the saint almost without the sanctity4 ,and my only claim even to attempt such a task is that ,i myself have for so long been in various stages of such a condition4 ,many thousand things that ,i now partly comprehend ,i should have thought utterly incomprehensible1 many things ,i now hold sacred ,i should have scouted as utterly superstitious1 many things that seem to me lucid and enlightened now they are seen from the inside ,i should honestly have called dark and barbarous seen from the outside1 when long ago in those days of boyhood my fancy first caught fire with the glory of ,francis of ,assisi4 ,i too have lived in ,arcady2 but even in ,arcady ,i met one walking in a brown habit who loved the woods better than ,pan4 ,the figure in the brown habit stands above the hearth in the room where ,i write1 and alone among many such images1 at no stage of my pilgrimage has he ever seemed to me a stranger4 ,there is something of harmony between the hearth and the firefight and my own first pleasure in his words about his brother fire2 for he stands far enough back in my memory to mingle with all those more domestic dreams of the first days4 ,even the fantastic shadows thrown by fire make a sort of shadow pantomime that belongs to the nursery2 yet the shadows were even then the shadows of his favourite beasts and birds1 as he saw them1 grotesque but haloed with the love of ,god4 ,his ,brother ,wolf and ,brother ,sheep seemed then almost like the ,brer ,fox and ,brer ,rabbit of a more ,christian ,uncle ,remus4 ,i have come slowly to see many and more marvellous aspects of such a man1 but ,i have never lost that one4 ,his figure stands on a sort of bridge connecting my boyhood with my conversion to many other things2 for the romance of his religion had penetrated even the rationalism of that vague ,victorian time4 ,in so far as ,i have had this experience1 ,i may be able to lead others a little further along that road2 but only a very little further4 ,nobody knows better than ,i do now that it is a road upon which angels might fear to tread2 but though ,i am certain of failure ,i am not altogether overcome by fear2 for he suffered fools gladly4 ,chapter ,,ii ,the ,world ,st4 ,francis ,found ,the modern innovation which has substituted journalism for history1 or for that tradition that is the gossip of history1 has had at least one definite effect4 ,it has insured that everybody should only hear the end of every story4 ,journalists are in the habit of printing above the very last chapters of their serial stories 7when the hero and heroine are just about to embrace in the last chapter1 as only an unfathomable perversity prevented them from doing in the first7 the rather misleading words1 ,you can begin this story here4 ,but even this is not a complete parallel2 for the journals do give some sort of a summary of the story1 while they never give anything remotely resembling a summary of the history4 ,newspapers not only deal with news1 but they deal with everything as if it were entirely new4 ,tutankamen1 for instance1 was entirely new4 ,it is exactly in the same fashion that we read that ,admiral ,bangs has been shot1 which is the first intimation we have that he has ever been born4 ,there is something singularly significant in the use which journalism makes of its stores of biography4 ,it never thinks of publishing the life until it is publishing the death4 ,as it deals with individuals it deals with institutions and ideas4 ,after the ,great ,war our public began to be told of all sorts of nations being emancipated4 ,it had never been told a word about their being enslaved4 ,we were called upon to judge of the justice of the settlements1 when we had never been allowed to hear of the very existence of the quarrels4 ,people would think it pedantic to talk about the ,serbian epics and they prefer to speak in plain every-day modern language about the ,yugo-,slavonic international new diplomacy2 and they are quite excited about something they call ,czecho-,slovakia without apparently having ever heard of ,bohemia4 ,things that are as old as ,europe are regarded as more recent than the very latest claims pegged out on the prairies of ,america4 ,it is very exciting2 like the last act of a play to people who have only come into the theatre just before the curtain falls4 ,but it does not conduce exactly to knowing what it is all about4 ,to those content with the mere fact of a pistol-shot or a passionate embrace1 such a leisurely manner of patronising the drama may be recommended4 ,to those tormented by a merely intellectual curiosity about who is kissing or killing whom1 and why1 it is unsatisfactory4 ,most modern history1 especially in ,england1 suffers from the same imperfection as journalism4 ,at best it only tells half of the history of ,christendom2 and that the second half without the first half4 ,men for whom reason begins with the ,revival of ,learning1 men for whom religion begins with the ,reformation1 can never give a complete account of anything1 for they have to start with institutions whose origin they cannot explain1 or generally even imagine4 ,just as we hear of the admiral being shot but have never heard of his being born1 so we all heard a great deal about the dissolution of the monasteries1 but we heard next to nothing about the creation of the monasteries4 ,now this sort of history would be hopelessly insufficient1 even for an intelligent man who hated the monasteries4 ,it is hopelessly insufficient in connection with institutions that many intelligent men do in a quite healthy spirit hate4 ,for instance1 it is possible that some of us have occasionally seen some mention1 by our learned leader-writers1 of an obscure institution called the ,spanish ,inquisition4 ,well1 it really is an obscure institution1 according to them and the histories they read4 ,it is obscure because its origin is obscure4 ,protestant history simply begins with the horrible thing in possession1 as the pantomime begins with the demon king in the goblin kitchen4 ,it is likely enough that it was1 especially towards the end1 a horrible thing that might be haunted by demons2 but if we say this was so1 we have no notion why it was so4 ,to understand the ,spanish ,inquisition it would be necessary to discover two things that we have never dreamed of bothering about2 what ,spain was and what an ,inquisition was4 ,the former would bring in the whole great question about the ,crusade against the ,moors2 and by what heroic chivalry a ,european nation freed itself of an alien domination from ,africa4 ,the latter would bring in the whole business of the other ,crusade against the ,albigensians1 and why men loved and hated that nihilistic vision from ,asia4 ,unless we understand that there was in these things originally the rush and romance of a ,crusade1 we cannot understand how they came to deceive men or drag them on towards evil4 ,the ,crusaders doubtless abused their victory1 but there was a victory to abuse4 ,and where there is victory there is valour in the field and popularity in the forum4 ,there is some sort of enthusiasm that encourages excesses or covers faults4 ,for instance1 ,i for one have maintained from very early days the responsibility of the ,english for their atrocious treatment of the ,irish4 ,but it would be quite unfair to the ,english to describe even the devilry of '#ih and leave out altogether all mention of the war with ,napoleon4 ,it would be unjust to suggest that the ,english mind was bent on nothing but the death of ,emmett1 when it was more probably full of the glory of the death of ,nelson4 ,unfortunately '#ih was very far from being the last date of such dirty work2 and only a few years ago our politicians started trying to rule by random robbing and killing1 while gently remonstrating with the ,irish for their memory of old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago4 ,but however badly we may think of the ,black-and-,tan business1 it would be unjust to forget that most of us were not thinking of ,black-and-,tan but of khaki2 and that khaki had just then a noble and national connotation covering many things4 ,to write of the war in ,ireland and leave out the war against ,prussia1 and the ,english sincerity about it1 would be unjust to the ,english4 ,so to talk about the torture-engine as if it had been a hideous toy is unjust to the ,spanish4 ,it does not tell sensibly from the start the story of what the ,spaniard did1 and why4 ,we may concede to our contemporaries that in any case it is not a story that ends well4 ,we do not insist that in their version it should begin well4 ,what we complain of is that in their version it does not begin at all4 ,they are only in at the death2 or even1 like ,lord ,tom ,noddy1 too late for the hanging4 ,it is quite true that it was sometimes more horrible than any hanging2 but they only gather1 so to speak1 the very ashes of the ashes2 the fag-end of the faggot4 ,the case of the ,inquisition is here taken at random1 for it is one among any number illustrating the same thing2 and not because it is especially connected with ,st4 ,francis1 in whatever sense it may have been connected with ,st4 ,dominic4 ,it may well be suggested later indeed that ,st4 ,francis is unintelligible1 just as ,st4 ,dominic is unintelligible1 unless we do understand something of what the thirteenth century meant by heresy and a crusade4 ,but for the moment ,i use it as a lesser example for a much larger purpose4 ,it is to point out that to begin the story of ,st4 ,francis with the birth of ,st4 ,francis would be to miss the whole point of the story1 or rather not to tell the story at all4 ,and it is to suggest that the modern tail-foremost type of journalistic history perpetually fails us4 ,we learn about reformers without knowing what they had to reform1 about rebels without a notion of what they rebelled against1 of memorials that are not connected with any memory and restorations of things that had apparently never existed before4 ,even at the expense of this chapter appearing disproportionate1 it is necessary to say something about the great movements that led up to the entrance of the founder of the ,franciscans4 ,it may seem to mean describing a world1 or even a universe1 in order to describe a man4 ,it will inevitably mean that the world or the universe will be described with a few desperate generalisations in a few abrupt sentences4 ,but so far from its meaning that we see a very small figure under so large a sky1 it will mean that we must measure the sky before we can begin to measure the towering stature of the man4 ,and this phrase alone brings me to the preliminary suggestions that seem necessary before even a slight sketch of the life of ,st4 ,francis4 ,it is necessary to realise1 in however rude and elementary a fashion1 into what sort of a world ,st4 ,francis entered and what has been the history of that world1 at least in so far as it affected him4 ,it is necessary to have1 if only in a few sentences1 a sort of preface in the form of an ,outline of ,history1 if we may borrow the phrase of ,mr4 ,wells4 ,in the case of ,mr4 ,wells himself1 it is evident that the distinguished novelist suffered the same disadvantage as if he had been obliged to write a novel of which he hated the hero4 ,to write history and hate ,rome1 both pagan and papal1 is practically to hate nearly everything that has happened4 ,it comes very near to hating humanity on purely humanitarian grounds4 ,to dislike both the priest and the soldier1 both the laurels of the warrior and the lilies of the saint1 is to suffer a division from the mass of mankind for which not all the dexterities of the finest and most flexible of modern intelligences can compensate4 ,a much wider sympathy is needed for the historical setting of ,st4 ,francis1 himself both a soldier and a saint4 ,i will therefore conclude this chapter with a few generalisations about the world that ,st4 ,francis found4 ,men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds4 ,as a matter of individual belief1 ,i should of course express it by saying that they are not sufficiently catholic to be ,catholic4 ,but ,i am not going to discuss here the doctrinal truths of ,christianity1 but simply the broad historical fact of ,christianity1 as it might appear to a really enlightened and imaginative person even if he were not a ,christian4 ,what ,i mean at the moment is that the majority of doubts are made out of details4 ,in the course of random reading a man comes across a pagan custom that strikes him as picturesque or a ,christian action that strikes him as cruel2 but he does not enlarge his mind sufficiently to see the main truth about pagan custom or the ,christian reaction against it4 ,until we understand1 not necessarily in detail1 but in their big bulk and proportion that pagan progress and that ,christian reaction1 we cannot really understand the point of history at which ,st4 ,francis appears or what his great popular mission was all about4 ,now everybody knows1 ,i imagine1 that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were an awakening of the world4 ,they were a fresh flowering of culture and the creative arts after a long spell of much sterner and even more sterile experience which we call the ,dark ,ages4 ,they may be called an emancipation2 they were certainly an end2 an end of what may at least seem a harsher and more inhuman time4 ,but what was it that was ended8 ,from what was it that men were emancipated8 ,that is where there is a real collision and point at issue between the different philosophies of history4 ,on the merely external and secular side1 it has been truly said that men awoke from a sleep2 but there had been dreams in that sleep of a mystical and sometimes of a monstrous kind4 ,in that rationalistic routine into which most modern historians have fallen1 it is considered enough to say that they were emancipated from mere savage superstition and advanced towards mere civilised enlightenment4 ,now this is the big blunder that stands as a stumbling-block at the very beginning of our story4 ,anybody who supposes that the ,dark ,ages were plain darkness and nothing else1 and that the dawn of the thirteenth century was plain daylight and nothing else1 will not be able to make head or tail of the human story of ,st4 ,francis of ,assisi4 ,the truth is that the joy of ,st4 ,francis and his ,jongleurs de ,dieu was not merely an awakening4 ,it was something which cannot be understood without understanding their own mystical creed4 ,the end of the ,dark ,ages was not merely the end of a sleep4 ,it was certainly not merely the end of a superstitious enslavement4 ,it was the end of something belonging to a quite definite but quite different order of ideas4 ,it was the end of a penance2 or1 if it be preferred1 a purgation4 ,it marked the moment when a certain spiritual expiation had been finally worked out and certain spiritual diseases had been finally expelled from the system4 ,they had been expelled by an era of asceticism1 which was the only thing that could have expelled them4 ,christianity had entered the world to cure the world2 and she had cured it in the only way in which it could be cured4 ,viewed merely in an external and experimental fashion1 the whole of the high civilisation of antiquity had ended in the learning of a certain lesson2 that is1 in its conversion to ,christianity4 ,but that lesson was a psychological fact as well as a theological faith4 ,that pagan civilisation had indeed been a very high civilisation4 ,it would not weaken our thesis1 it might even strengthen it1 to say that it was the highest that humanity ever reached4 ,it had discovered its still unrivalled arts of poetry and plastic representation2 it had discovered its own permanent political ideals2 it had discovered its own clear system of logic and of language4 ,but above all1 it had discovered its own mistake4 ,that mistake was too deep to be ideally defined2 the short-hand of it is to call it the mistake of nature-worship4 ,it might almost as truly be called the mistake of being natural2 and it was a very natural mistake4 ,the ,greeks1 the great guides and pioneers of pagan antiquity1 started out with the idea of something splendidly obvious and direct2 the idea that if man walked straight ahead on the high road of reason and nature1 he could come to no harm2 especially if he was1 as the ,greek was1 eminently enlightened and intelligent4 ,we might be so flippant as to say that man was simply to follow his nose1 so long as it was a ,greek nose4 ,and the case of the ,greeks themselves is alone enough to illustrate the strange but certain fatality that attends upon this fallacy4 ,no sooner did the ,greeks themselves begin to follow their own noses and their own notion of being natural1 than the queerest thing in history seems to have happened to them4 ,it was much too queer to be an easy matter to discuss4 ,it may be remarked that our more repulsive realists never give us the benefit of their realism4 ,their studies of unsavoury subjects never take note of the testimony which they bear to the truths of a traditional morality4 ,but if we had the taste for such things1 we could cite thousands of such things as part of the case for ,christian morals4 ,and an instance of this is found in the fact that nobody has written1 in this sense1 a real moral history of the ,greeks4 ,nobody has seen the scale or the strangeness of the story4 ,the wisest men in the world set out to be natural2 and the most unnatural thing in the world was the very first thing they did4 ,the immediate effect of saluting the sun and the sunny sanity of nature was a perversion spreading like a pestilence4 ,the greatest and even the purest philosophers could not apparently avoid this low sort of lunacy4 ,why8 ,it would seem simple enough for the people whose poets had conceived ,helen of ,troy1 whose sculptors had carved the ,venus of ,milo1 to remain healthy on the point4 ,the truth is that people who worship health cannot remain healthy4 ,when ,man goes straight he goes crooked4 ,when he follows his nose he manages somehow to put his nose out of joint1 or even to cut off his nose to spite his face2 and that in accordance with something much deeper in human nature than nature-worshippers could ever understand4 ,it was the discovery of that deeper thing1 humanly speaking1 that constituted the conversion to ,christianity4 ,there is a bias in man like the bias in the bowl2 and ,christianity was the discovery of how to correct the bias and therefore hit the mark4 ,there are many who will smile at the saying2 but it is profoundly true to say that the glad good news brought by the ,gospel was the news of original sin4 ,rome rose at the expense of her ,greek teachers largely because she did not entirely consent to be taught these tricks4 ,she had a much more decent domestic tradition2 but she ultimately suffered from the same fallacy in her religious tradition2 which was necessarily in no small degree the heathen tradition of nature-worship4 ,what was the matter with the whole heathen civilisation was that there was nothing for the mass of men in the way of mysticism1 except that concerned with the mystery of the nameless forces of nature1 such as sex and growth and death4 ,in the ,roman ,empire also1 long before the end1 we find nature-worship inevitably producing things that are against nature4 ,cases like that of ,nero have passed into a proverb1 when ,sadism sat on a throne brazen in the broad daylight4 ,but the truth ,i mean is something much more subtle and universal than a conventional catalogue of atrocities4 ,what had happened to the human imagination1 as a whole1 was that the whole world was coloured by dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions2 by natural passions becoming unnatural passions4 ,thus the effect of treating sex as only one innocent natural thing was that every other innocent natural thing became soaked and sodden with sex4 ,for sex cannot be admitted to a mere equality among elementary emotions or experiences like eating and sleeping4 ,the moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant4 ,there is something dangerous and disproportionate in its place in human nature1 for whatever reason2 and it does really need a special purification and dedication4 ,the modern talk about sex being free like any other sense1 about the body being beautiful like any tree or flower1 is either a description of the ,garden of ,eden or a piece of thoroughly bad psychology1 of which the world grew weary two thousand years ago4 ,this is not to be confused with mere self-righteous sensationalism about the wickedness of the pagan world4 ,it was not so much that the pagan world was wicked as that it was good enough to realise that its paganism was becoming wicked1 or rather was on the logical high road to wickedness4 ,i mean that there was no future for natural magic2 to deepen it was only to darken it into black magic4 ,there was no future for it2 because in the past it had only been innocent because it was young4 ,we might say it had only been innocent because it was shallow4 ,pagans were wiser than paganism2 that is why the pagans became ,christians4 ,thousands of them had philosophy and family virtues and military honour to hold them up2 but by this time the purely popular thing called religion was certainly dragging them down4 ,when this reaction against the evil is allowed for1 it is true to repeat that it was an evil that was everywhere4 ,in another and more literal sense its name was ,pan4 ,it was no metaphor to say that these people needed a new heaven and a new earth2 for they had really defiled their own earth and even their own heaven4 ,how could their case be met by looking at the sky1 when erotic legends were scrawled in stars across it2 how could they learn anything from the love of birds and flowers after the sort of love stories that were told of them8 ,it is impossible here to multiply evidences1 and one small example may stand for the rest4 ,we know what sort of sentimental associations are called up to us by the phrase a garden2 and how we think mostly of the memory of melancholy and innocent romances1 or quite as often of some gracious maiden lady or kindly old parson pottering under a yew hedge1 perhaps in sight of a village spire4 ,then1 let anyone who knows a little ,latin poetry recall suddenly what would once have stood in place of the sun-dial or the fountain1 obscene and monstrous in the sun2 and of what sort was the god of their gardens4 ,nothing could purge this obsession but a religion that was literally unearthly4 ,it was no good telling such people to have a natural religion full of stars and flowers2 there was not a flower or even a star that had not been stained4 ,they had to go into the desert where they could find no flowers or even into the cavern where they could see no stars4 ,into that desert and that cavern the highest human intellect entered for some four centuries2 and it was the very wisest thing it could do4 ,nothing but the stark supernatural stood up for its salvation2 if ,god could not save it1 certainly the gods could not4 ,the ,early ,church called the gods of paganism devils2 and the ,early ,church was perfectly right4 ,whatever natural religion may have had to do with their beginnings1 nothing but fiends now inhabited those hollow shrines4 ,pan was nothing but panic4 ,venus was nothing but venereal vice4 ,i do not mean for a moment1 of course1 that all the individual pagans were of this character even to the end2 but it was as individuals that they differed from it4 ,nothing distinguishes paganism from ,christianity so clearly as the fact that the individual thing called philosophy had little or nothing to do with the social thing called religion4 ,anyhow it was no good to preach natural religion to people to whom nature had grown as unnatural as any religion4 ,they knew much better than we do what was the matter with them and what sort of demons at once tempted and tormented them2 and they wrote across that great space of history the text3 ,this sort goeth not out but by prayer and fasting4 ,now the historic importance of ,st4 ,francis and the transition from the twelfth to the thirteenth century1 lies in the fact that they marked the end of this expiation4 ,men at the close of the ,dark ,ages may have been rude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen tribes1 more barbarous than themselves1 but they were clean4 ,they were like children2 the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the clean pleasure of children4 ,we have to conceive them in ,europe as a whole living under little local governments1 feudal in so far as they were a survival of fierce wars with the barbarians1 often monastic and carrying a more friendly and fatherly character1 still faintly imperial in so far as ,rome still ruled as a great legend4 ,but in ,italy something had survived more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity3 the republic4 ,italy was dotted with little states1 largely democratic in their ideals1 and often filled with real citizens4 ,but the city no longer lay open as under the ,roman peace1 but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war and all the citizens had to be soldiers4 ,one of these stood in a steep and striking position on the wooded hills of ,umbria2 and its name was ,assisi4 ,out of its deep gate under its high turrets was to come the message that was the gospel of the hour1 ,your warfare is accomplished1 your iniquity is pardoned4 ,but it was out of all these fragmentary things of feudalism and freedom and remains of ,roman ,law that there was to rise1 at the beginning of the thirteenth century1 vast and almost universal1 the mighty civilisation of the ,middle ,ages4 ,it is an exaggeration to attribute it entirely to the inspiration of any one man1 even the most original genius of the thirteenth century4 ,its elementary ethics of fraternity and fair play had never been entirely extinct and ,christendom had never been anything less than ,christian4 ,the great truisms about justice and pity can be found in the rudest monastic records of the barbaric transition or the stiffest maxims of the ,byzantine decline4 ,and early in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a larger moral movement had clearly begun4 ,but what may fairly be said of it is this1 that over all those first movements there was still something of that ancient austerity that came from the long penitential period4 ,it was the twilight of morning2 but it was still a grey twilight4 ,this may be illustrated by the mere mention of two or three of these reforms before the ,franciscan reform4 ,the monastic institution itself1 of course1 was far older than all these things2 indeed it was undoubtedly almost as old as ,christianity4 ,its counsels of perfection had always taken the form of vows of chastity and poverty and obedience4 ,with these unworldly aims it had long ago civilised a great part of the world4 ,the monks had taught people to plough and sow as well as to read and write2 indeed they had taught the people nearly everything that the people knew4 ,but it may truly be said that the monks were severely practical1 in the sense that they were not only practical but also severe2 though they were generally severe with themselves and practical for other people4 ,all this early monastic movement had long ago settled down and doubtless often deteriorated2 but when we come to the first medieval movements this sterner character is still apparent4 ,three examples may be taken to illustrate the point4 ,first1 the ancient social mould of slavery was already beginning to melt4 ,not only was the slave turning into the serf1 who was practically free as regards his own farm and family life1 but many lords were freeing slaves and serfs altogether4 ,this was done under the pressure of the priests2 but especially it was done in the spirit of a penance4 ,in one sense1 of course1 any ,catholic society must have an atmosphere of penance2 but ,i am speaking of that rather sterner spirit of penance which had expiated the excesses of paganism4 ,there was about such restitutions the atmosphere of the death-bed2 as many of them doubtless were examples of death-bed repentance4 ,a very honest atheist with whom ,i once debated made use of the expression1 ,men have only been kept in slavery by the fear of hell4 ,as ,i pointed out to him1 if he had said that men had only been freed from slavery by the fear of hell1 he would at least have been referring to an unquestionable historical fact4 ,another example was the sweeping reform of ,church discipline by ,pope ,gregory the ,seventh4 ,it really was a reform1 undertaken from the highest motives and having the healthiest results2 it conducted a searching inquisition against simony or the financial corruptions of the clergy2 it insisted on a more serious and self-sacrificing ideal for the life of a parish priest4 ,but the very fact that this largely took the form of making universal the obligation of celibacy will strike the note of something which1 however noble1 would seem to many to be vaguely negative4 ,the third example is in one sense the strongest of all4 ,for the third example was a war2 a heroic war and for many of us a holy war2 but still something having all the stark and terrible responsibilities of war4 ,there is no space here to say all that should be said about the true nature of the ,crusades4 ,everybody knows that in the very darkest hour of the ,dark ,ages a sort of heresy had sprung up in ,arabia and become a new religion of a military but nomadic sort1 invoking the name of ,mahomet4 ,intrinsically it had a character found in many heresies from the ,moslem to the ,monist4 ,it seemed to the heretic a sane simplification of religion2 while it seems to the ,catholic an insane simplification of religion1 because it simplifies all to a single idea and so loses the breadth and balance of ,catholicism4 ,anyhow its objective character was that of a military danger to ,christendom and ,christendom had struck at the very heart of it1 in seeking to reconquer the ,holy ,places4 ,the great ,duke ,godfrey and the first ,christians who stormed ,jerusalem were heroes if there were ever any in the world2 but they were the heroes of a tragedy4 ,now ,i have taken these two or three examples of the earlier medieval movements in order to note about them one general character1 which refers back to the penance that followed paganism4 ,there is something in all these movements that is bracing even while it is still bleak1 like a wind blowing between the clefts of the mountains4 ,that wind1 austere and pure1 of which the poet speaks1 is really the spirit of the time1 for it is the wind of a world that has at last been purified4 ,to anyone who can appreciate atmospheres there is something clear and clean about the atmosphere of this crude and often harsh society4 ,its very lusts are clean2 for they have no longer any smell of perversion4 ,its very cruelties are clean2 they are not the luxurious cruelties of the amphitheatre4 ,they come either of a very simple horror at blasphemy or a very simple fury at insult4 ,gradually against this grey background beauty begins to appear1 as something really fresh and delicate and above all surprising4 ,love returning is no longer what was once called platonic but what is still called chivalric love4 ,the flowers and stars have recovered their first innocence4 ,fire and water are felt to be worthy to be the brother and sister of a saint4 ,the purge of paganism is complete at last4 ,for water itself has been washed4 ,fire itself has been purified as by fire4 ,water is no longer that water into which slaves were flung to feed the fishes4 ,fire is no longer that fire through which children were passed to ,moloch4 ,flowers smell no more of the forgotten garlands gathered in the garden of ,priapus2 stars stand no more as signs of the far frigidity of gods as cold as those cold fires4 ,they are all like things newly made and awaiting new names1 from one who shall come to name them4 ,neither the universe nor the earth have now any longer the old sinister significance of the world4 ,they await a new reconciliation with man1 but they are already capable of being reconciled4 ,man has stripped from his soul the last rag of nature-worship1 and can return to nature4 ,while it was yet twilight a figure appeared silently and suddenly on a little hill above the city1 dark against the fading darkness4 ,for it was the end of a long and stern night1 a night of vigil1 not unvisited by stars4 ,he stood with his hands lifted1 as in so many statues and pictures1 and about him was a burst of birds singing2 and behind him was the break of day4 ,chapter ,,iii ,francis the ,fighter ,according to one tale1 which if not true would be none the less typical1 the very name of ,st4 ,francis was not so much a name as a nickname4 ,there would be something akin to his familiar and popular instinct in the notion that he was nicknamed very much as an ordinary schoolboy might be called ,frenchy at school4 ,according to this version1 his name was not ,francis at all but ,john2 and his companions called him ,francesco or ,the little ,frenchman because of his passion for the ,french poetry of the ,troubadours4 ,the more probable story is that his mother had named him ,john when he was born in the absence of his father1 who shortly returned from a visit to ,france1 where his commercial success had filled him with so much enthusiasm for ,french taste and social usage that he gave his son the new name signifying the ,frank or ,frenchman4 ,in either case the name has a certain significance1 as connecting ,francis from the first with what he himself regarded as the romantic fairyland of the ,troubadours4 ,the name of the father was ,pietro ,bernardone and he was a substantial citizen of the guild of the cloth merchants in the town of ,assisi4 ,it is hard to describe the position of such a man without some appreciation of the position of such a guild and even of such a town4 ,it did not exactly correspond to anything that is meant in modern times either by a merchant or a man of business or a tradesman1 or anything that exists under the conditions of capitalism4 ,bernardone may have employed people but he was not an employer2 that is1 he did not belong to an employing class as distinct from an employed class4 ,the person we definitely hear of his employing is his son ,francis2 who1 one is tempted to guess1 was about the last person that any man of business would employ if it were convenient to employ anybody else4 ,he was rich1 as a peasant may be rich by the work of his own family2 but he evidently expected his own family to work in a way almost as plain as a peasant's4 ,he was a prominent citizen1 but he belonged to a social order which existed to prevent him being too prominent to be a citizen4 ,it kept all such people on their own simple level1 and no prosperity connoted that escape from drudgery by which in modern times the lad might have seemed to be a lord or a fine gentleman or something other than the cloth merchant's son4 ,this is a rule that is proved even in the exception4 ,francis was one of those people who are popular with everybody in any case2 and his guileless swagger as a ,troubadour and leader of ,french fashions made him a sort of romantic ringleader among the young men of the town4 ,he threw money about both in extravagance and benevolence1 in a way native to a man who never1 all his life1 exactly understood what money was4 ,this moved his mother to mingled exultation and exasperation and she said1 as any tradesman's wife might say anywhere3 ,he is more like a prince than our son4 ,but one of the earliest glimpses we have of him shows him as simply selling bales of cloth from a booth in the market2 which his mother may or may not have believed to be one of the habits of princes4 ,this first glimpse of the young man in the market is symbolic in more ways than one4 ,an incident occurred which is perhaps the shortest and sharpest summary that could be given of certain curious things which were a part of his character1 long before it was transfigured by transcendental faith4 ,while he was selling velvet and fine embroideries to some solid merchant of the town1 a beggar came imploring alms2 evidently in a somewhat tactless manner4 ,it was a rude and simple society and there were no laws to punish a starving man for expressing his need for food1 such as have been established in a more humanitarian age2 and the lack of any organised police permitted such persons to pester the wealthy without any great danger4 ,but there was1 ,i believe1 in many places a local custom of the guild forbidding outsiders to interrupt a fair bargain2 and it is possible that some such thing put the mendicant more than normally in the wrong4 ,francis had all his life a great liking for people who had been put hopelessly in the wrong4 ,on this occasion he seems to have dealt with the double interview with rather a divided mind2 certainly with distraction1 possibly with irritation4 ,perhaps he was all the more uneasy because of the almost fastidious standard of manners that came to him quite naturally4 ,all are agreed that politeness flowed from him from the first1 like one of the public fountains in such a sunny ,italian market place4 ,he might have written among his own poems as his own motto that verse of ,mr4 ,belloc's poem-- ',of ,courtesy1 it is much less ,than courage of heart or holiness1 ,yet in my walks it seems to me ,that the grace of ,god is in ,courtesy4' ,nobody ever doubted that ,francis ,bernardone had courage of heart1 even of the most ordinary manly and military sort2 and a time was to come when there was quite as little doubt about the holiness and the grace of ,god4 ,but ,i think that if there was one thing about which he was punctilious1 it was punctiliousness4 ,if there was one thing of which so humble a man could be said to be proud1 he was proud of good manners4 ,only behind his perfectly natural urbanity were wider and even wilder possibilities1 of which we get the first flash in this trivial incident4 ,anyhow ,francis was evidently torn two ways with the botheration of two talkers1 but finished his business with the merchant somehow2 and when he had finished it1 found the beggar was gone4 ,francis leapt from his booth1 left all the bales of velvet and embroidery behind him apparently unprotected1 and went racing across the market place like an arrow from the bow4 ,still running1 he threaded the labyrinth of the narrow and crooked streets of the little town1 looking for his beggar1 whom he eventually discovered2 and loaded that astonished mendicant with money4 ,then he straightened himself1 so to speak1 and swore before ,god that he would never all his life refuse help to a poor man4 ,the sweeping simplicity of this undertaking is extremely characteristic4 ,never was any man so little afraid of his own promises4 ,his life was one riot of rash vows2 of rash vows that turned out right4 ,the first biographers of ,francis1 naturally alive with the great religious revolution that he wrought1 equally naturally looked back to his first years chiefly for omens and signs of such a spiritual earthquake4 ,but writing at a greater distance1 we shall not decrease that dramatic effect1 but rather increase it1 if we realise that there was not at this time any external sign of anything particularly mystical about the young man4 ,he had not anything of that early sense of his vocation that has belonged to some of the saints4 ,over and above his main ambition to win fame as a ,french poet1 he would seem to have most often thought of winning fame as a soldier4 ,he was born kind2 he was brave in the normal boyish fashion2 but he drew the line both in kindness and bravery pretty well where most boys would have drawn it2 for instance1 he had the human horror of leprosy of which few normal people felt any need to be ashamed4 ,he had the love of gay and bright apparel which was inherent in the heraldic taste of medieval times and seems altogether to have been rather a festive figure4 ,if he did not paint the town red1 he would probably have preferred to paint it all the colours of the rainbow1 as in a medieval picture4 ,but in this story of the young man in gay garments scampering after the vanishing beggar in rags there are certain notes of his natural individuality that must be assumed from first to last4 ,for instance1 there is the spirit of swiftness4 ,in a sense he continued running for the rest of his life1 as he ran after the beggar4 ,because nearly all the errands he ran on were errands of mercy1 there appeared in his portraiture a mere element of mildness which was true in the truest sense1 but is easily misunderstood4 ,a certain precipitancy was the very poise of his soul4 ,this saint should be represented among the other saints as angels were sometimes represented in pictures of angels2 with flying feet or even with feathers2 in the spirit of the text that makes angels winds and messengers a flaming fire4 ,it is a curiosity of language that courage actually means running2 and some of our sceptics will no doubt demonstrate that courage really means running away4 ,but his courage was running1 in the sense of rushing4 ,with all his gentleness1 there was originally something of impatience in his impetuosity4 ,the psychological truth about it illustrates very well the modern muddle about the word practical4 ,if we mean by what is practical what is most immediately practicable1 we mean merely what is easiest4 ,in that sense ,st4 ,francis was very unpractical1 and his ultimate aims were very unworldly4 ,but if we mean by practicality a preference for prompt effort and energy over doubt or delay1 he was very practical indeed4 ,some might call him a madman1 but he was the very reverse of a dreamer4 ,nobody would be likely to call him a man of business2 but he was very emphatically a man of action4 ,in some of his early experiments he was rather too much of a man of action2 he acted too soon and was too practical to be prudent4 ,but at every turn of his extraordinary career we shall find him flinging himself round corners in the most unexpected fashion1 as when he flew through the crooked streets after the beggar4 ,another element implied in the story1 which was already partially a natural instinct1 before it became a supernatural ideal1 was something that had never perhaps been wholly lost in those little republics of medieval ,italy4 ,it was something very puzzling to some people2 something clearer as a rule to ,southerners than to ,northerners1 and ,i think to ,catholics than to ,protestants2 the quite natural assumption of the equality of men4 ,it has nothing necessarily to do with the ,franciscan love for men2 on the contrary one of its merely practical tests is the equality of the duel4 ,perhaps a gentleman will never be fully an egalitarian until he can really quarrel with his servant4 ,but it was an antecedent condition of the ,franciscan brotherhood2 and we feel it in this early and secular incident4 ,francis1 ,i fancy1 felt a real doubt about which he must attend to1 the beggar or the merchant2 and having attended to the merchant1 he turned to attend to the beggar2 he thought of them as two men4 ,this is a thing much more difficult to describe1 in a society from which it is absent1 but it was the original basis of the whole business2 it was why the popular movement arose in that sort of place and that sort of man4 ,his imaginative magnanimity afterwards rose like a tower to starry heights that might well seem dizzy and even crazy2 but it was founded on this high table-land of human equality4 ,i have taken this the first among a hundred tales of the youth of ,st4 ,francis1 and dwelt on its significance a little1 because until we have learned to look for the significance there will often seem to be little but a sort of light sentiment in telling the story4 ,st4 ,francis is not a proper person to be patronised with merely pretty stories4 ,there are any number of them2 but they are too often used so as to be a sort of sentimental sediment of the medieval world1 instead of being1 as the saint emphatically is1 a challenge to the modern world4 ,we must take his real human development somewhat more seriously2 and the next story in which we get a real glimpse of it is in a very different setting4 ,but in exactly the same way it opens1 as if by accident1 certain abysses of the mind and perhaps of the unconscious mind4 ,francis still looks more or less like an ordinary young man2 and it is only when we look at him as an ordinary young man1 that we realise what an extraordinary young man he must be4 ,war had broken out between ,assisi and ,perugia4 ,it is now fashionable to say in a satirical spirit that such wars did not so much break out as go on indefinitely between the city-states of medieval ,italy4 ,it will be enough to say here that if one of these medieval wars had really gone on without stopping for a century1 it might possibly have come within a remote distance of killing as many people as we kill in a year1 in one of our great modern scientific wars between our great modern industrial empires4 ,but the citizens of the medieval republic were certainly under the limitation of only being asked to die for the things with which they had always lived1 the houses they inhabited1 the shrines they venerated and the rulers and representatives they knew2 and had not the larger vision calling them to die for the latest rumours about remote colonies as reported in anonymous newspapers4 ,and if we infer from our own experience that war paralysed civilisation1 we must at least admit that these warring towns turned out a number of paralytics who go by the names of ,dante and ,michael ,angelo1 ,ariosto and ,titian1 ,leonardo and ,columbus1 not to mention ,catherine of ,siena and the subject of this story4 ,while we lament all this local patriotism as a hubbub of the ,dark ,ages1 it must seem a rather curious fact that about three quarters of the greatest men who ever lived came out of these little towns and were often engaged in these little wars4 ,it remains to be seen what will ultimately come out of our large towns2 but there has been no sign of anything of this sort since they became large2 and ,i have sometimes been haunted by a fancy of my youth1 that these things will not come till there is a city wall round ,clapham and the tocsin is rung at night to arm the citizens of ,wimbledon4 ,anyhow1 the tocsin was rung in ,assisi and the citizens armed1 and among them ,francis the son of the cloth merchant4 ,he went out to fight with some company of lancers and in some fight or foray or other he and his little band were taken prisoners4 ,to me it seems most probable that there had been some tale of treason or cowardice about the disaster2 for we are told that there was one of the captives with whom his fellow-prisoners flatly refused to associate even in prison2 and when this happens in such circumstances1 it is generally because the military blame for the surrender is thrown on some individual4 ,anyhow1 somebody noted a small but curious thing1 though it might seem rather negative than positive4 ,francis1 we are told1 moved among his captive companions with all his characteristic courtesy and even conviviality1 liberal and hilarious as somebody said of him1 resolved to keep up their spirits and his own4 ,and when he came across the mysterious outcast1 traitor or coward or whatever he was called1 he simply treated him exactly like all the rest1 neither with coldness nor compassion1 but with the same unaffected gaiety and good fellowship4 ,but if there had been present in that prison someone with a sort of second sight about the truth and trend of spiritual things1 he might have known he was in the presence of something new and seemingly almost anarchic2 a deep tide driving out to uncharted seas of charity4 ,for in this sense there was really something wanting in ,francis of ,assisi1 something to which he was blind that he might see better and more beautiful things4 ,all those limits in good fellowship and good form1 all those landmarks of social life that divide the tolerable and the intolerable1 all those social scruples and conventional conditions that are normal and even noble in ordinary men1 all those things that hold many decent societies together1 could never hold this man at all4 ,he liked as he liked2 he seems to have liked everybody1 but especially those whom everybody disliked him for liking4 ,something very vast and universal was already present in that narrow dungeon2 and such a seer might have seen in its darkness that red halo of caritas caritatum which marks one saint among saints as well as among men4 ,he might have heard the first whisper of that wild blessing that afterwards took the form of a blasphemy2 ,he listens to those to whom ,god himself will not listen4 ,but though such a seer might have seen such a truth1 it is exceedingly doubtful if ,francis himself saw it4 ,he had acted out of an unconscious largeness1 or in the fine medieval phrase largesse1 within himself1 something that might almost have been lawless if it had not been reaching out to a more divine law2 but it is doubtful whether he yet knew that the law was divine4 ,it is evident that he had not at this time any notion of abandoning the military1 still less of adopting the monastic life4 ,it is true that there is not1 as pacifists and prigs imagine1 the least inconsistency between loving men and fighting them1 if we fight them fairly and for a good cause4 ,but it seems to me that there was more than this involved2 that the mind of the young man was really running towards a military morality in any case4 ,about this time the first calamity crossed his path in the form of a malady which was to revisit him many times and hamper his headlong career4 ,sickness made him more serious2 but one fancies it would only have made him a more serious soldier1 or even more serious about soldiering4 ,and while he was recovering1 something rather larger than the little feuds and raids of the ,italian towns opened an avenue of adventure and ambition4 ,the crown of ,sicily1 a considerable centre of controversy at the time1 was apparently claimed by a certain ,gauthier de ,brienne1 and the ,papal cause to aid which ,gauthier was called in aroused enthusiasm among a number of young ,assisians1 including ,francis1 who proposed to march into ,apulia on the count's behalf2 perhaps his ,french name had something to do with it4 ,for it must never be forgotten that though that world was in one sense a world of little things1 it was a world of little things concerned about great things4 ,there was more internationalism in the lands dotted with tiny republics than in the huge homogeneous impenetrable national divisions of to-day4 ,the legal authority of the ,assisian magistrates might hardly reach further than a bow-shot from their high embattled city walls4 ,but their sympathies might be with the ride of the ,normans through ,sicily or the palace of the ,troubadours at ,toulouse2 with the ,emperor throned in the ,german forests or the great ,pope dying in the exile of ,salerno4 ,above all1 it must be remembered that when the interests of an age are mainly religious they must be universal4 ,nothing can be more universal than the universe4 ,and there are several things about the religious position at that particular moment which modern people not unnaturally fail to realise4 ,for one thing1 modern people naturally think of people so remote as ancient people1 and even early people4 ,we feel vaguely that these things happened in the first ages of the ,church4 ,the ,church was already a good deal more than a thousand years old4 ,that is1 the ,church was then rather older than ,france is now1 a great deal older than ,england is now4 ,and she looked old then2 almost as old as she does now2 possibly older than she does now4 ,the ,church looked like great ,charlemagne with the long white beard1 who had already fought a hundred wars with the heathen1 and in the legend was bidden by an angel to go forth and fight once more though he was two hundred years old4 ,the ,church had topped her thousand years and turned the corner of the second thousand2 she had come through the ,dark ,ages in which nothing could be done except desperate fighting against the barbarians and the stubborn repetition of the creed4 ,the creed was still being repeated after the victory or escape2 but it is not unnatural to suppose that there was something a little monotonous about the repetition4 ,the ,church looked old then as now2 and there were some who thought her dying then as now4 ,in truth orthodoxy was not dead but it may have been dull2 it is certain that some people began to think it dull4 ,the ,troubadours of the ,provenal movement had already begun to take that turn or twist towards ,oriental fancies and the paradox of pessimism1 which always come to ,europeans as something fresh when their own sanity seems to be something stale4 ,it is likely enough that after all those centuries of hopeless war without and ruthless asceticism within1 the official orthodoxy seemed to be something stale4 ,the freshness and freedom of the first ,christians seemed then as much as now a lost and almost prehistoric age of gold4 ,rome was still more rational than anything else2 the ,church was really wiser but it may well have seemed wearier than the world4 ,there was something more adventurous and alluring1 perhaps1 about the mad metaphysics that had been blown across out of ,asia4 ,dreams were gathering like dark clouds over the ,midi to break in a thunder of anathema and civil war4 ,only the light lay on the great plain round ,rome2 but the light was blank and the plain was flat2 and there was no stir in the still air and the immemorial silence about the sacred town4 ,high in the dark house of ,assisi ,francesco ,bernardone slept and dreamed of arms4 ,there came to him in the darkness a vision splendid with swords1 patterned after the cross in the ,crusading fashion1 of spears and shields and helmets hung in a high armoury1 all bearing the sacred sign4 ,when he awoke he accepted the dream as a trumpet bidding him to the battlefield1 and rushed out to take horse and arms4 ,he delighted in all the exercises of chivalry2 and was evidently an accomplished cavalier and fighting man by the tests of the tournament and the camp4 ,he would doubtless at any time have preferred a ,christian sort of chivalry2 but it seems clear that he was also in a mood which thirsted for glory1 though in him that glory would always have been identical with honour4 ,he was not without some vision of that wreath of laurel which ,csar has left for all the ,latins4 ,as he rode out to war the great gate in the deep wall of ,assisi resounded with his last boast1 ,i shall come back a great prince4 ,a little way along his road his sickness rose again and threw him4 ,it seems highly probable1 in the light of his impetuous temper1 that he had ridden away long before he was fit to move4 ,and in the darkness of this second and far more desolating interruption1 he seems to have had another dream in which a voice said to him1 ,you have mistaken the meaning of the vision4 ,return to your own town4 ,and ,francis trailed back in his sickness to ,assisi1 a very dismal and disappointed and perhaps even derided figure1 with nothing to do but to wait for what should happen next4 ,it was his first descent into a dark ravine that is called the valley of humiliation1 which seemed to him very rocky and desolate1 but in which he was afterwards to find many flowers4 ,but he was not only disappointed and humiliated2 he was also very much puzzled and bewildered4 ,he still firmly believed that his two dreams must have meant something2 and he could not imagine what they could possibly mean4 ,it was while he was drifting1 one may even say mooning1 about the streets of ,assisi and the fields outside the city wall1 that an incident occurred to him which has not always been immediately connected with the business of the dreams1 but which seems to me the obvious culmination of them4 ,he was riding listlessly in some wayside place1 apparently in the open country1 when he saw a figure coming along the road towards him and halted2 for he saw it was a leper4 ,and he knew instantly that his courage was challenged1 not as the world challenges1 but as one would challenge who knew the secrets of the heart of a man4 ,what he saw advancing was not the banner and spears of ,perugia1 from which it never occurred to him to shrink2 not the armies that fought for the crown of ,sicily1 of which he had always thought as a courageous man thinks of mere vulgar danger4 ,francis ,bernardone saw his fear coming up the road towards him2 the fear that comes from within and not without2 though it stood white and horrible in the sunlight4 ,for once in the long rush of his life his soul must have stood still4 ,then he sprang from his horse1 knowing nothing between stillness and swiftness1 and rushed on the leper and threw his arms round him4 ,it was the beginning of a long vocation of ministry among many lepers1 for whom he did many services2 to this man he gave what money he could and mounted and rode on4 ,we do not know how far he rode1 or with what sense of the things around him2 but it is said that when he looked back1 he could see no figure on the road4 ,chapter ,,iv ,francis the ,builder ,we have now reached the great break in the life of ,francis of ,assisi2 the point at which something happened to him that must remain greatly dark to most of us1 who are ordinary and selfish men whom ,god has not broken to make anew4 ,in dealing with this difficult passage1 especially for my own purpose of making things moderately easy for the more secular sympathiser1 ,i have hesitated as to the proper course2 and have eventually decided to state first of all what happened1 with little more than a hint of what ,i imagine to have been the meaning of what happened4 ,the fuller meaning may be debated more easily afterwards1 when it was unfolded in the full ,franciscan life4 ,anyhow what happened was this4 ,the story very largely revolves round the ruins of the ,church of ,st4 ,damian1 an old shrine in ,assisi which was apparently neglected and falling to pieces4 ,here ,francis was in the habit of praying before the crucifix during these dark and aimless days of transition that followed the tragical collapse of all his military ambitions1 probably made bitter by some loss of social prestige terrible to his sensitive spirit4 ,as he did so he heard a voice saying to him1 ,francis1 seest thou not that my house is in ruins8 ,go and restore it for me4 ,francis sprang up and went4 ,to go and do something was one of the driving demands of his nature2 probably he had gone and done it before he had at all thoroughly thought out what he had done4 ,in any case what he had done was something very decisive and immediately very disastrous for his singular social career4 ,in the coarse conventional language of the uncomprehending world1 he stole4 ,from his own enthusiastic point of view1 he extended to his venerable father ,peter ,bernardone the exquisite excitement and inestimable privilege of assisting1 more or less unconsciously1 in the rebuilding of ,st4 ,damian's ,church4 ,in point of fact what he did was first to sell his own horse and then to go off and sell several bales of his father's cloth1 making the sign of the cross over them to indicate their pious and charitable destination4 ,peter ,bernardone did not see things in this light4 ,peter ,bernardone indeed had not very much light to see by1 so far as understanding the genius and temperament of his extraordinary son was concerned4 ,instead of understanding in what sort of a wind and flame of abstract appetites the lad was living1 instead of simply telling him 7as the priest practically did later7 that he had done an indefensible thing with the best intentions1 old ,bernardone took up the matter in the hardest style2 in a legal and literal fashion4 ,he used absolute political powers like a heathen father1 and himself put his son under lock and key as a vulgar thief4 ,it would appear that the cry was caught up among many with whom the unlucky ,francis had once been popular2 and altogether1 in his efforts to build up the house of ,god he had only succeeded in bringing his own house about his ears and lying buried under the ruins4 ,the quarrel dragged drearily through several stages2 at one time the wretched young man seems to have disappeared underground1 so to speak1 into some cavern or cellar where he remained huddled hopelessly in the darkness4 ,anyhow1 it was his blackest moment2 the whole world had turned over2 the whole world was on top of him4 ,when he came out1 it was only perhaps gradually that anybody grasped that something had happened4 ,he and his father were summoned in the court of the bishop2 for ,francis had refused the authority of all legal tribunals4 ,the bishop addressed some remarks to him1 full of that excellent common sense which the ,catholic ,church keeps permanently as the background for all the fiery attitudes of her saints4 ,he told ,francis that he must unquestionably restore the money to his father2 that no blessing could follow a good work done by unjust methods2 and in short 7to put it crudely7 if the young fanatic would give back his money to the old fool1 the incident would then terminate4 ,there was a new air about ,francis4 ,he was no longer crushed1 still less crawling1 so far as his father was concerned2 yet his words do not1 ,i think1 indicate either just indignation or wanton insult or anything in the nature of a mere continuation of the quarrel4 ,they are rather remotely akin to mysterious utterances of his great model1 ,what have ,i to do with thee8 or even the terrible ,touch me not4 ,he stood up before them all and said1 ,up to this time ,i have called ,pietro ,bernardone father1 but now ,i am the servant of ,god4 ,not only the money but everything that can be called his ,i will restore to my father1 even the very clothes he has given me4 ,and he rent off all his garments except one2 and they saw that that was a hair-shirt4 ,he piled the garments in a heap on the floor and tossed the money on top of them4 ,then he turned to the bishop1 and received his blessing1 like one who turns his back on society2 and1 according to the account1 went out as he was into the cold world4 ,apparently it was literally a cold world at the moment1 and snow was on the ground4 ,a curious detail1 very deep in its significance1 ,i fancy1 is given in the same account of this great crisis in his life4 ,he went out half-naked in his hair-shirt into the winter woods1 walking the frozen ground between the frosty trees2 a man without a father4 ,he was penniless1 he was parentless1 he was to all appearance without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world2 and as he went under the frosty trees1 he burst suddenly into song4 ,it was apparently noted as remarkable that the language in which he sang was ,french1 or that ,provenal which was called for convenience ,french4 ,it was not his native language2 and it was in his native language that he ultimately won fame as a poet2 indeed ,st4 ,francis is one of the very first of the national poets in the purely national dialects of ,europe4 ,but it was the language with which all his most boyish ardours and ambitions had been identified2 it was for him pre-eminently the language of romance4 ,that it broke from him in this extraordinary extremity seems to me something at first sight very strange and in the last analysis very significant4 ,what that significance was1 or may well have been1 ,i will try to suggest in the subsequent chapter2 it is enough to indicate here that the whole philosophy of ,st4 ,francis revolved round the idea of a new supernatural light on natural things1 which meant the ultimate recovery not the ultimate refusal of natural things4 ,and for the purpose of this purely narrative part of the business1 it is enough to record that while he wandered in the winter forest in his hair-shirt1 like the very wildest of the hermits1 he sang in the tongue of the ,troubadours4 ,meanwhile the narrative naturally reverts to the problem of the ruined or at least neglected church1 which had been the starting point of the saint's innocent crime and beatific punishment4 ,that problem still predominated in his mind and was soon engaging his insatiable activities2 but they were activities of a new sort2 and he made no more attempts to interfere with the commercial ethics of the town of ,assisi4 ,there had dawned on him one of those great paradoxes that are also platitudes4 ,he realised that the way to build a church is not to become entangled in bargains and1 to him1 rather bewildering questions of legal claim4 ,the way to build a church is not to pay for it1 certainly not with somebody else's money4 ,the way to build a church is not even to pay for it with your own money4 ,the way to build a church is to build it4 ,he went about by himself collecting stones4 ,he begged all the people he met to give him stones4 ,in fact he became a new sort of beggar1 reversing the parable2 a beggar who asks not for bread but a stone4 ,probably1 as happened to him again and again throughout his extraordinary existence1 the very queerness of the request gave it a sort of popularity2 and all sorts of idle and luxurious people fell in with the benevolent project1 as they would have done with a bet4 ,he worked with his own hands at the rebuilding of the church1 dragging the material like a beast of burden and learning the very last and lowest lessons of toil4 ,a vast number of stories are told about ,francis at this as at every other period of his life2 but for the purpose here1 which is one of simplification1 it is best to dwell on this definite re-entrance of the saint into the world by the low gate of manual labour4 ,there does indeed run through the whole of his life a sort of double meaning1 like his shadow thrown upon the wall4 ,all his action had something of the character of an allegory2 and it is likely enough that some leaden-witted scientific historian may some day try to prove that he himself was never anything but an allegory4 ,it is true enough in this sense that he was labouring at a double task1 and rebuilding something else as well as the church of ,st4 ,damian4 ,he was not only discovering the general lesson that his glory was not to be in overthrowing men in battle but in building up the positive and creative monuments of peace4 ,he was truly building up something else1 or beginning to build it up2 something that has often enough fallen into ruin but has never been past rebuilding2 a church that could always be built anew though it had rotted away to its first foundation-stone1 against which the gates of hell shall not prevail4 ,the next stage in his progress is probably marked by his transferring the same energies of architectural reconstruction to the little church of ,st4 ,mary of the ,angels at the ,portiuncula4 ,he had already done something of the same kind at a church dedicated to ,st4 ,peter2 and that quality in his life noted above1 which made it seem like a symbolical drama1 led many of his most devout biographers to note the numerical symbolism of the three churches4 ,there was at any rate a more historical and practical symbolism about two of them4 ,for the original church of ,st4 ,damian afterwards became the seat of his striking experiment of a female order1 and of the pure and spiritual romance of ,st4 ,clare4 ,and the church of the ,portiuncula will remain for ever as one of the great historic buildings of the world2 for it was there that he gathered the little knot of friends and enthusiasts2 it was the home of many homeless men4 ,at this time1 however1 it is not clear that he had the definite idea of any such monastic developments4 ,how early the plan appeared in his own mind it is of course impossible to say2 but on the face of events it first takes the form of a few friends who attached themselves to him one by one because they shared his own passion for simplicity4 ,the account given of the form of their dedication is1 however1 very significant2 for it was that of an invocation of the simplification of life as suggested in the ,new ,testament4 ,the adoration of ,christ had been a part of the man's passionate nature for a long time past4 ,but the imitation of ,christ1 as a sort of plan or ordered scheme of life1 may in that sense be said to begin here4 ,the two men who have the credit1 apparently1 of having first perceived something of what was happening in the world of the soul were a solid and wealthy citizen named ,bernard of ,quintavalle and a canon from a neighbouring church named ,peter4 ,it is the more to their credit because ,francis1 if one may put it so1 was by this time wallowing in poverty and association with lepers and ragged mendicants2 and these two were men with much to give up2 the one of comforts in the world and the other of ambition in the ,church4 ,bernard the rich burgher did quite literally and finally sell all he had and give to the poor4 ,peter did even more2 for he descended from a chair of spiritual authority1 probably when he was already a man of mature years and therefore of fixed mental habits1 to follow an extravagant young eccentric whom most people probably regarded as a maniac4 ,what it was of which they had caught a glimpse1 of which ,francis had seen the glory1 may be suggested later so far as it can be suggested at all4 ,at this stage we need profess to see no more than all ,assisi saw1 and that something not altogether unworthy of comment4 ,the citizens of ,assisi only saw the camel go in triumph through the eye of the needle and ,god doing impossible things because to him all things were possible2 only a priest who rent his robes like the ,publican and not like the ,pharisee and a rich man who went away joyful1 for he had no possessions4 ,these three strange figures are said to have built themselves a sort of hut or den adjoining the leper hospital4 ,there they talked to each other1 in the intervals of drudgery and danger 7for it needed ten times more courage to look after a leper than to fight for the crown of ,sicily71 in the terms of their new life1 almost like children talking a secret language4 ,of these individual elements on their first friendship we can say little with certainty2 but it is certain that they remained friends to the end4 ,bernard of ,quintavalle occupies in the story something of the position of ,sir ,bedivere1 first made and latest left of ,arthur's knights1 for he reappears again at the right hand of the saint on his death-bed and receives some sort of special blessing4 ,but all those things belong to another historical world and were quite remote from the ragged and fantastic trio in their tumble-down hut4 ,they were not monks except perhaps in the most literal and archaic sense which was identical with hermits4 ,they were1 so to speak1 three solitaries living together socially1 but not as a society4 ,the whole thing seems to have been intensely individual1 as seen from the outside doubtless individual to the point of insanity4 ,the stir of something that had in it the promise of a movement or a mission can first be felt as ,i have said in the affair of the appeal to the ,new ,testament4 ,it was a sort of sors virgiliana applied to the ,bible2 a practice not unknown among ,protestants though open to their criticism1 one would think1 as being rather a superstition of pagans4 ,anyhow it seems almost the opposite of searching the ,scriptures to open them at random2 but ,st4 ,francis certainly opened them at random4 ,according to one story1 he merely made the sign of the cross over the volume of the ,gospel and opened it at three places reading three texts4 ,the first was the tale of the rich young man whose refusal to sell all his goods was the occasion of the great paradox about the camel and the needle4 ,the second was the commandment to the disciples to take nothing with them on their journey1 neither scrip nor staff nor any money4 ,the third was that saying1 literally to be called crucial1 that the follower of ,christ must also carry his cross4 ,there is a somewhat similar story of ,francis finding one of these texts1 almost as accidentally1 merely in listening to what happened to be the ,gospel of the day4 ,but from the former version at least it would seem that the incident occurred very early indeed in his new life1 perhaps soon after his breach with his father2 for it was after this oracle1 apparently1 that ,bernard the first disciple rushed forth and scattered all his goods among the poor4 ,if this be so1 it would seem that nothing followed it for the moment except the individual ascetical life with the hut for a hermitage4 ,it must of course have been a rather public sort of hermitage1 but it was none the less in a very real sense withdrawn from the world4 ,st4 ,simeon ,stylites on the top of his pillar was in one sense an exceedingly public character2 but there was something a little singular in his situation for all that4 ,it may be presumed that most people thought the situation of ,francis singular1 that some even thought it too singular4 ,there was inevitably indeed in any ,catholic society something ultimate and even subconscious that was at least capable of comprehending it better than a pagan or puritan society could comprehend it4 ,but we must not at this stage1 ,i think1 exaggerate this potential public sympathy4 ,as has already been suggested1 the ,church and all its institutions had already the air of being old and settled and sensible things1 the monastic institutions among the rest4 ,common sense was commoner in the ,middle ,ages1 ,i think1 than in our own rather jumpy journalistic age2 but men like ,francis are not common in any age1 nor are they to be fully understood merely by the exercise of common sense4 ,the thirteenth century was certainly a progressive period2 perhaps the only really progressive period in human history4 ,but it can truly be called progressive precisely because its progress was very orderly4 ,it is really and truly an example of an epoch of reforms without revolutions4 ,but the reforms were not only progressive but very practical2 and they were very much to the advantage of highly practical institutions2 the towns and the trading guilds and the manual crafts4 ,now the solid men of town and guild in the time of ,francis of ,assisi were probably very solid indeed4 ,they were much more economically equal1 they were much more justly governed in their own economic environment1 than the moderns who struggle madly between starvation and the monopolist prizes of capitalism2 but it is likely enough that the majority of such citizens were as hard-headed as peasants4 ,certainly the behaviour of the venerable ,peter ,bernardone does not indicate a delicate sympathy with the fine and almost fanciful subtleties of the ,franciscan spirit4 ,and we cannot measure the beauty and originality of this strange spiritual adventure1 unless we have the humour and human sympathy to put into plain words how it would have looked to such an unsympathetic person at the time when it happened4 ,in the next chapter ,i shall make an attempt1 inevitably inadequate1 to indicate the inside of this story of the building of the three churches and the little hut4 ,in this chapter ,i have but outlined it from the outside4 ,and in concluding that chapter ,i ask the reader to remember and realise what that story really looked like1 when thus seen from the outside4 ,given a critic of rather coarse common sense1 with no feeling about the incident except annoyance1 and how would the story seem to stand8 ,a young fool or rascal is caught robbing his father and selling goods which he ought to guard2 and the only explanation he will offer is that a loud voice from nowhere spoke in his ear and told him to mend the cracks and holes in a particular wall4 ,he then declares himself naturally independent of all powers corresponding to the police or the magistrates1 and takes refuge with an amiable bishop who is forced to remonstrate with him and tell him he is wrong4 ,he then proceeds to take off his clothes in public and practically throw them at his father2 announcing at the same time that his father is not his father at all4 ,he then runs about the town asking everybody he meets to give him fragments of buildings or building materials1 apparently with reference to his old monomania about mending the wall4 ,it may be an excellent thing that cracks should be filled up1 but preferably not by somebody who is himself cracked2 and architectural restoration like other things is not best performed by builders who1 as we should say1 have a tile loose4 ,finally the wretched youth relapses into rags and squalor and practically crawls away into the gutter4 ,that is the spectacle that ,francis must have presented to a very large number of his neighbours and friends4 ,how he lived at all must have seemed to them dubious2 but presumably he already begged for bread as he had begged for building materials4 ,but he was always very careful to beg for the blackest or worst bread he could get1 for the stalest crusts or something rather less luxurious than the crumbs which the dogs eat1 and which fall from the rich man's table4 ,thus he probably fared worse than an ordinary beggar2 for the beggar would eat the best he could get and the saint ate the worst he could get4 ,in plain fact he was ready to live on refuse2 and it was probably something much uglier as an experience than the refined simplicity which vegetarians and water-drinkers would call the simple life4 ,as he dealt with the question of food1 so he apparently dealt with the question of clothing4 ,he dealt with it1 that is1 upon the same principle of taking what he could get1 and not even the best of what he could get4 ,according to one story he changed clothes with a beggar2 and he would doubtless have been content to change them with a scarecrow4 ,in another version he got hold of the rough brown tunic of a peasant1 but presumably only because the peasant gave him his very oldest brown tunic1 which was probably very old indeed4 ,most peasants have few changes of clothing to give away2 and some peasants are not specially inclined to give them away until it is absolutely necessary4 ,it is said that in place of the girdle which he had flung off 7perhaps with the more symbolic scorn because it probably carried the purse or wallet by the fashion of the period7 he picked up a rope more or less at random1 because it was lying near1 and tied it round his waist4 ,he undoubtedly meant it as a shabby expedient2 rather as the very destitute tramp will sometimes tie his clothes together with a piece of string4 ,he meant to strike the note of collecting his clothes anyhow1 like rags from a succession of dust-bins4 ,ten years later that make-shift costume was the uniform of five thousand men2 and a hundred years later1 in that1 for a pontifical panoply1 they laid great ,dante in the grave4 ,chapter ,v ,le ,jongleur de ,dieu ,many signs and symbols might be used to give a hint of what really happened in the mind of the young poet of ,assisi4 ,indeed they are at once too numerous for selection and yet too slight for satisfaction4 ,but one of them may be adumbrated in this small and apparently accidental fact3 that when he and his secular companions carried their pageant of poetry through the town1 they called themselves ,troubadours4 ,but when he and his spiritual companions came out to do their spiritual work in the world1 they were called by their leader the ,jongleurs de ,dieu4 ,nothing has been said here at any length of the great culture of the ,troubadours as it appeared in ,provence or ,languedoc1 great as was their influence in history and their influence on ,st4 ,francis4 ,something more may be said of them when we come to summarise his relation to history2 it is enough to note here in a few sentences the facts about them that were relevant to him1 and especially the particular point now in question1 which was the most relevant of all4 ,everybody knows who the ,troubadours were2 everybody knows that very early in the ,middle ,ages1 in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries1 there arose a civilisation in ,southern ,france which threatened to rival or eclipse the rising tradition of ,paris4 ,its chief product was a school of poetry1 or rather more especially a school of poets4 ,they were primarily love-poets1 though they were often also satirists and critics of things in general4 ,their picturesque posture in history is largely due to the fact that they sang their own poems and often played their own accompaniments1 on the light musical instruments of the period2 they were minstrels as well as men of letters4 ,allied to their love-poetry were other institutions of a decorative and fanciful kind concerned with the same theme4 ,there was what was called the ,gay ,science1 the attempt to reduce to a sort of system the fine shades of flirtation and philandering4 ,there were the things called ,courts of ,love1 in which the same delicate subjects were dealt with with legal pomp and pedantry4 ,there is one point in this part of the business that must be remembered in relation to ,st4 ,francis4 ,there were manifest moral dangers in all this superb sentimentalism2 but it is a mistake to suppose that its only danger of exaggeration was in the direction of sensualism4 ,there was a strain in the southern romance that was actually an excess of spirituality2 just as the pessimist heresy it produced was in one sense an excess of spirituality4 ,the love was not always animal2 sometimes it was so airy as to be almost allegorical4 ,the reader realises that the lady is the most beautiful being that can possibly exist1 only he has occasional doubts as to whether she does exist4 ,dante owed something to the ,troubadours2 and the critical debates about his ideal woman are an excellent example of these doubts4 ,we know that ,beatrice was not his wife1 but we should in any case be equally sure that she was not his mistress2 and some critics have even suggested that she was nothing at all1 so to speak1 except his muse4 ,this idea of ,beatrice as an allegorical figure is1 ,i believe1 unsound2 it would seem unsound to any man who has read the ,vita ,nuova and has been in love4 ,but the very fact that it is possible to suggest it illustrates something abstract and scholastic in these medieval passions4 ,but though they were abstract passions they were very passionate passions4 ,these men could feel almost like lovers1 even about allegories and abstractions4 ,it is necessary to remember this in order to realise that ,st4 ,francis was talking the true language of a troubadour when he said that he also had a most glorious and gracious lady and that her name was ,poverty4 ,but the particular point to be noted here is not concerned so much with the word ,troubadour as with the word ,jongleur4 ,it is especially concerned with the transition from one to the other2 and for this it is necessary to grasp another detail about the poets of the ,gay ,science4 ,a jongleur was not the same thing as a troubadour1 even if the same man were both a troubadour and a jongleur4 ,more often1 ,i believe1 they were separate men as well as separate trades4 ,in many cases apparently the two men would walk the world together like companions in arms1 or rather companions in arts4 ,the jongleur was properly a joculator or jester2 sometimes he was what we should call a juggler4 ,this is the point1 ,i imagine1 of the tale about ,taillefer the ,jongleur at the battle of ,hastings1 who sang of the death of ,roland while he tossed up his sword and caught it1 as a juggler catches balls4 ,sometimes he may have been even a tumbler2 like that acrobat in the beautiful legend who was called ,the ,tumbler of ,our ,lady1 because he turned head over heels and stood on his head before the image of the ,blessed ,virgin1 for which he was nobly thanked and comforted by her and the whole company of heaven4 ,in the ordinary way1 we may imagine1 the troubadour would exalt the company with earnest and solemn strains of love and then the jongleur would do his turn as a sort of comic relief4 ,a glorious medieval romance remains to be written about two such companions wandering through the world4 ,at any rate1 if there is one place in which the true ,franciscan spirit can be found outside the true ,franciscan story1 it is in that tale of the ,tumbler of ,our ,lady4 ,and when ,st4 ,francis called his followers the ,jongleurs de ,dieu1 he meant something very like the ,tumblers of ,our ,lord4 ,somewhere in that transition from the ambition of the ,troubadour to the antics of the ,tumbler is hidden1 as under a parable1 the truth of ,st4 ,francis4 ,of the two minstrels or entertainers1 the jester was presumably the servant or at least the secondary figure4 ,st4 ,francis really meant what he said when he said he had found the secret of life in being the servant and the secondary figure4 ,there was to be found ultimately in such service a freedom almost amounting to frivolity4 ,it was comparable to the condition of the jongleur because it almost amounted to frivolity4 ,the jester could be free when the knight was rigid2 and it was possible to be a jester in the service which is perfect freedom4 ,this parallel of the two poets or minstrels is perhaps the best preliminary and external statement of the ,franciscan change of heart1 being conceived under an image with which the imagination of the modern world has a certain sympathy4 ,there was1 of course1 a great deal more than this involved2 and we must endeavour however insufficiently to penetrate past the image to the idea4 ,it is so far like the tumblers that it is really to many people a topsy-turvy idea4 ,francis1 at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern1 underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind2 which was really like the reversal of a complete somersault1 in that by coming full circle it came back1 or apparently came back1 to the same normal posture4 ,it is necessary to use the grotesque simile of an acrobatic antic1 because there is hardly any other figure that will make the fact clear4 ,but in the inward sense it was a profound spiritual revolution4 ,the man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again2 in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead1 as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit4 ,and the effects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as extravagant as any parallel can make them4 ,he looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands4 ,if we apply this parable of ,our ,lady's ,tumbler to the case1 we shall come very near to the point of it4 ,now it really is a fact that any scene such as a landscape can sometimes be more clearly and freshly seen if it is seen upside down4 ,there have been landscape-painters who adopted the most startling and pantomimic postures in order to look at it for a moment in that fashion4 ,thus that inverted vision1 so much more bright and quaint and arresting1 does bear a certain resemblance to the world which a mystic like ,st4 ,francis sees every day4 ,but herein is the essential part of the parable4 ,our ,lady's ,tumbler did not stand on his head in order to see flowers and trees as a clearer or quainter vision4 ,he did not do so2 and it would never have occurred to him to do so4 ,our ,lady's ,tumbler stood on his head to please ,our ,lady4 ,if ,st4 ,francis had done the same thing1 as he was quite capable of doing1 it would originally have been from the same motive2 a motive of a purely supernatural thought4 ,it would be after this that his enthusiasm would extend itself and give a sort of halo to the edges of all earthly things4 ,this is why it is not true to represent ,st4 ,francis as a mere romantic forerunner of the ,renaissance and a revival of natural pleasures for their own sake4 ,the whole point of him was that the secret of recovering the natural pleasures lay in regarding them in the light of a supernatural pleasure4 ,in other words1 he repeated in his own person that historic process noted in the introductory chapter2 the vigil of asceticism which ends in the vision of a natural world made new4 ,but in the personal case there was even more than this2 there were elements that make the parallel of the ,jongleur or ,tumbler even more appropriate than this4 ,it may be suspected that in that black cell or cave ,francis passed the blackest hours of his life4 ,by nature he was the sort of man who has that vanity which is the opposite of pride2 that vanity which is very near to humility4 ,he never despised his fellow creatures and therefore he never despised the opinion of his fellow creatures2 including the admiration of his fellow creatures4 ,all that part of his human nature had suffered the heaviest and most crushing blows4 ,it is possible that after his humiliating return from his frustrated military campaign he was called a coward4 ,it is certain that after his quarrel with his father about the bales of cloth he was called a thief4 ,and even those who had sympathised most with him1 the priest whose church he had restored1 the bishop whose blessing he had received1 had evidently treated him with an almost humorous amiability which left only too clear the ultimate conclusion of the matter4 ,he had made a fool of himself4 ,any man who has been young1 who has ridden horses or thought himself ready for a fight1 who has fancied himself as a troubadour and accepted the conventions of comradeship1 will appreciate the ponderous and crushing weight of that simple phrase4 ,the conversion of ,st4 ,francis1 like the conversion of ,st4 ,paul1 involved his being in some sense flung suddenly from a horse2 but in a sense it was an even worse fall2 for it was a war-horse4 ,anyhow1 there was not a rag of him left that was not ridiculous4 ,everybody knew that at the best he had made a fool of himself4 ,it was a solid objective fact1 like the stones in the road1 that he had made a fool of himself4 ,he saw himself as an object1 very small and distinct like a fly walking on a clear window pane2 and it was unmistakably a fool4 ,and as he stared at the word fool written in luminous letters before him1 the word itself began to shine and change4 ,we used to be told in the nursery that if a man were to bore a hole through the centre of the earth and climb continually down and down1 there would come a moment at the centre when he would seem to be climbing up and up4 ,i do not know whether this is true4 ,the reason ,i do not know whether it is true is that ,i never happened to bore a hole through the centre of the earth1 still less to crawl through it4 ,if ,i do not know what this reversal or inversion feels like1 it is because ,i have never been there4 ,and this also is an allegory4 ,it is certain that the writer1 it is even possible that the reader1 is an ordinary person who has never been there4 ,we cannot follow ,st4 ,francis to that final spiritual overturn in which complete humiliation becomes complete holiness or happiness1 because we have never been there4 ,i for one do not profess to follow it any further than that first breaking down of the romantic barricades of boyish vanity1 which ,i have suggested in the last paragraph4 ,and even that paragraph1 of course1 is merely conjectural1 an individual guess at what he may have felt2 but he may have felt something quite different4 ,but whatever else it was1 it was so far analogous to the story of the man making a tunnel through the earth that it did mean a man going down and down until at some mysterious moment he begins to go up and up4 ,we have never gone up like that because we have never gone down like that2 we are obviously incapable of saying that it does not happen2 and the more candidly and calmly we read human history1 and especially the history of the wisest men1 the more we shall come to the conclusion that it does happen4 ,of the intrinsic internal essence of the experience ,i make no pretence of writing at all4 ,but the external effect of it1 for the purpose of this narrative1 may be expressed by saying that when ,francis came forth from his cave of vision1 he was wearing the same word fool as a feather in his cap2 as a crest or even a crown4 ,he would go on being a fool2 he would become more and more of a fool2 he would be the court fool of the ,king of ,paradise4 ,this state can only be represented in symbol2 but the symbol of inversion is true in another way4 ,if a man saw the world upside down1 with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool1 one effect would be to emphasise the idea of dependence4 ,there is a ,latin and literal connection2 for the very word dependence only means hanging4 ,it would make vivid the ,scriptural text which says that ,god has hanged the world upon nothing4 ,if ,st4 ,francis had seen1 in one of his strange dreams1 the town of ,assisi upside down1 it need not have differed in a single detail from itself except in being entirely the other way round4 ,but the point is this3 that whereas to the normal eye the large masonry of its walls or the massive foundations of its watchtowers and its high citadel would make it seem safer and more permanent1 the moment it was turned over the very same weight would make it seem more helpless and more in peril4 ,it is but a symbol2 but it happens to fit the psychological fact4 ,st4 ,francis might love his little town as much as before1 or more than before2 but the nature of the love would be altered even in being increased4 ,he might see and love every tile on the steep roofs or every bird on the battlements2 but he would see them all in a new and divine light of eternal danger and dependence4 ,instead of being merely proud of his strong city because it could not be moved1 he would be thankful to ,god ,almighty that it had not been dropped2 he would be thankful to ,god for not dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling stars4 ,perhaps ,st4 ,peter saw the world so1 when he was crucified head-downwards4 ,it is commonly in a somewhat cynical sense that men have said1 ,blessed is he that expecteth nothing1 for he shall not be disappointed4 ,it was in a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that ,st4 ,francis said1 ,blessed is he who expecteth nothing1 for he shall enjoy everything4 ,it was by this deliberate idea of starting from zero1 from the dark nothingness of his own deserts1 that he did come to enjoy even earthly things as few people have enjoyed them2 and they are in themselves the best working example of the idea4 ,for there is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset4 ,but there is more than this involved1 and more indeed than is easily to be expressed in words4 ,it is not only true that the less a man thinks of himself1 the more he thinks of his good luck and of all the gifts of ,god4 ,it is also true that he sees more of the things themselves when he sees more of their origin2 for their origin is a part of them and indeed the most important part of them4 ,thus they become more extraordinary by being explained4 ,he has more wonder at them but less fear of them2 for a thing is really wonderful when it is significant and not when it is insignificant2 and a monster1 shapeless or dumb or merely destructive1 may be larger than the mountains1 but is still in a literal sense insignificant4 ,for a mystic like ,st4 ,francis the monsters had a meaning2 that is1 they had delivered their message4 ,they spoke no longer in an unknown tongue4 ,that is the meaning of all those stories1 whether legendary or historical1 in which he appears as a magician speaking the language of beasts and birds4 ,the mystic will have nothing to do with mere mystery2 mere mystery is generally a mystery of iniquity4 ,the transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of revolution2 by which one for whom all things illustrate and illuminate ,god becomes one for whom ,god illustrates and illuminates all things4 ,it is rather like the reversal whereby a lover might say at first sight that a lady looked like a flower1 and say afterwards that all flowers reminded him of his lady4 ,a saint and a poet standing by the same flower might seem to say the same thing2 but indeed though they would both be telling the truth1 they would be telling different truths4 ,for one the joy of life is a cause of faith1 for the other rather a result of faith4 ,but one effect of the difference is that the sense of a divine dependence1 which for the artist is like the brilliant levin-blaze1 for the saint is like the broad daylight4 ,being in some mystical sense on the other side of things1 he sees things go forth from the divine as children going forth from a familiar and accepted home1 instead of meeting them as they come out1 as most of us do1 upon the roads of the world4 ,and it is the paradox that by this privilege he is more familiar1 more free and fraternal1 more carelessly hospitable than we4 ,for us the elements are like heralds who tell us with trumpet and tabard that we are drawing near the city of a great king2 but he hails them with an old familiarity that is almost an old frivolity4 ,he calls them his ,brother ,fire and his ,sister ,water4 ,so arises out of this almost nihilistic abyss the noble thing that is called ,praise2 which no one will ever understand while he identifies it with nature-worship or pantheistic optimism4 ,when we say that a poet praises the whole creation1 we commonly mean only that he praises the whole cosmos4 ,but this sort of poet does really praise creation1 in the sense of the act of creation4 ,he praises the passage or transition from nonentity to entity2 there falls here also the shadow of that archetypal image of the bridge1 which has given to the priest his archaic and mysterious name4 ,the mystic who passes through the moment when there is nothing but ,god does in some sense behold the beginningless beginnings in which there was really nothing else4 ,he not only appreciates everything but the nothing of which everything was made4 ,in a fashion he endures and answers even the earthquake irony of the ,book of ,job2 in some sense he is there when the foundations of the world are laid1 with the morning stars singing together and the sons of ,god shouting for joy4 ,that is but a distant adumbration of the reason why the ,franciscan1 ragged1 penniless1 homeless and apparently hopeless1 did indeed come forth singing such songs as might come from the stars of morning2 and shouting1 a son of ,god4 ,this sense of the great gratitude and the sublime dependence was not a phrase or even a sentiment2 it is the whole point that this was the very rock of reality4 ,it was not a fancy but a fact2 rather it is true that beside it all facts are fancies4 ,that we all depend in every detail1 at every instant1 as a ,christian would say upon ,god1 as even an agnostic would say upon existence and the nature of things1 is not an illusion of imagination2 on the contrary1 it is the fundamental fact which we cover up1 as with curtains1 with the illusion of ordinary life4 ,that ordinary life is an admirable thing in itself1 just as imagination is an admirable thing in itself4 ,but it is much more the ordinary life that is made of imagination than the contemplative life4 ,he who has seen the whole world hanging on a hair of the mercy of ,god has seen the truth2 we might almost say the cold truth4 ,he who has seen the vision of his city upside down has seen it the right way up4 ,rossetti makes the remark somewhere1 bitterly but with great truth1 that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank4 ,the converse of this proposition is also true2 and it is certain that this gratitude produced1 in such men as we are here considering1 the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man4 ,the great painter boasted that he mixed all his colours with brains1 and the great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks4 ,all goods look better when they look like gifts4 ,in this sense it is certain that the mystical method establishes a very healthy external relation to everything else4 ,but it must always be remembered that everything else has for ever fallen into a second place1 in comparison with this simple fact of dependence on the divine reality4 ,in so far as ordinary social relations have in them something that seems solid and self-supporting1 some sense of being at once buttressed and cushioned2 in so far as they establish sanity in the sense of security and security in the sense of self-sufficiency1 the man who has seen the world hanging on a hair does have some difficulty in taking them so seriously as that4 ,in so far as even the secular authorities and hierarchies1 even the most natural superiorities and the most necessary subordinations1 tend at once to put a man in his place1 and to make him sure of his position1 the man who has seen the human hierarchy upside down will always have something of a smile for its superiorities4 ,in this sense the direct vision of divine reality does disturb solemnities that are sane enough in themselves4 ,the mystic may have added a cubit to his stature2 but he generally loses something of his status4 ,he can no longer take himself for granted1 merely because he can verify his own existence in a parish register or a family ,bible4 ,such a man may have something of the appearance of the lunatic who has lost his name while preserving his nature2 who straightway forgets what manner of man he was4 ,hitherto ,i have called ,pietro ,bernardone father2 but now ,i am the servant of ,god4 ,all these profound matters must be suggested in short and imperfect phrases2 and the shortest statement of one aspect of this illumination is to say that it is the discovery of an infinite debt4 ,it may seem a paradox to say that a man may be transported with joy to discover that he is in debt4 ,but this is only because in commercial cases the creditor does not generally share the transports of joy2 especially when the debt is by hypothesis infinite and therefore unrecoverable4 ,but here again the parallel of a natural love-story of the nobler sort disposes of the difficulty in a flash4 ,there the infinite creditor does share the joy of the infinite debtor2 for indeed they are both debtors and both creditors4 ,in other words debt and dependence do become pleasures in the presence of unspoilt love2 the word is used too loosely and luxuriously in popular simplifications like the present2 but here the word is really the key4 ,it is the key of all the problems of ,franciscan morality which puzzle the merely modern mind2 but above all it is the key of asceticism4 ,it is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be for ever paying it4 ,he will be for ever giving back what he cannot give back1 and cannot be expected to give back4 ,he will be always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks4 ,men who think they are too modern to understand this are in fact too mean to understand it2 we are most of us too mean to practise it4 ,we are not generous enough to be ascetics2 one might almost say not genial enough to be ascetics4 ,a man must have magnanimity of surrender1 of which he commonly only catches a glimpse in first love1 like a glimpse of our lost ,eden4 ,but whether he sees it or not1 the truth is in that riddle2 that the whole world has1 or is1 only one good thing2 and it is a bad debt4 ,if ever that rarer sort of romantic love1 which was the truth that sustained the ,troubadours1 falls out of fashion and is treated as fiction1 we may see some such misunderstanding as that of the modern world about asceticism4 ,for it seems conceivable that some barbarians might try to destroy chivalry in love1 as the barbarians ruling in ,berlin destroyed chivalry in war4 ,if that were ever so1 we should have the same sort of unintelligent sneers and unimaginative questions4 ,men will ask what selfish sort of woman it must have been who ruthlessly exacted tribute in the form of flowers1 or what an avaricious creature she can have been to demand solid gold in the form of a ring2 just as they ask what cruel kind of ,god can have demanded sacrifice and self-denial4 ,they will have lost the clue to all that lovers have meant by love2 and will not understand that it was because the thing was not demanded that it was done4 ,but whether or no any such lesser things will throw a light on the greater1 it is utterly useless to study a great thing like the ,franciscan movement while remaining in the modern mood that murmurs against gloomy asceticism4 ,the whole point about ,st4 ,francis of ,assisi is that he certainly was ascetical and he certainly was not gloomy4 ,as soon as ever he had been unhorsed by the glorious humiliation of his vision of dependence on the divine love1 he flung himself into fasting and vigil exactly as he had flung himself furiously into battle4 ,he had wheeled his charger clean round1 but there was no halt or check in the thundering impetuosity of his charge4 ,there was nothing negative about it2 it was not a regimen or a stoical simplicity of life4 ,it was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control4 ,it was as positive as a passion2 it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure4 ,he devoured fasting as a man devours food4 ,he plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold4 ,and it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure4 ,there undeniably is the historical fact2 and there attached to it is another moral fact almost as undeniable4 ,it is certain that he held on this heroic or unnatural course from the moment when he went forth in his hair-shirt into the winter woods to the moment when he desired even in his death agony to lie bare upon the bare ground1 to prove that he had and that he was nothing4 ,and we can say1 with almost as deep a certainty1 that the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once1 in all their shining cycles round the world of labouring humanity1 looked down upon a happy man4 ,chapter ,,vi ,the ,little ,poor ,man ,from that cavern1 that was a furnace of glowing gratitude and humility1 there came forth one of the strongest and strangest and most original personalities that human history has known4 ,he was1 among other things1 emphatically what we call a character2 almost as we speak of a character in a good novel or play4 ,he was not only a humanist but a humorist2 a humorist especially in the old ,english sense of a man always in his humour1 going his own way and doing what nobody else would have done4 ,the anecdotes about him have a certain biographical quality of which the most familiar example is ,dr4 ,johnson2 which belongs in another way to ,william ,blake or to ,charles ,lamb4 ,the atmosphere can only be defined by a sort of antithesis2 the act is always unexpected and never inappropriate4 ,before the thing is said or done it cannot even be conjectured2 but after it is said or done it is felt to be merely characteristic4 ,it is surprisingly and yet inevitably individual4 ,this quality of abrupt fitness and bewildering consistency belongs to ,st4 ,francis in a way that marks him out from most men of his time4 ,men are learning more and more of the solid social virtues of medieval civilisation2 but those impressions are still social rather than individual4 ,the medieval world was far ahead of the modern world in its sense of the things in which all men are at one3 death and the daylight of reason and the common conscience that holds communities together4 ,its generalisations were saner and sounder than the mad materialistic theories of to-day2 nobody would have tolerated a ,schopenhauer scorning life or a ,nietzsche living only for scorn4 ,but the modern world is more subtle in its sense of the things in which men are not at one2 in the temperamental varieties and differentiations that make up the personal problems of life4 ,all men who can think themselves now realise that the great schoolmen had a type of thought that was wonderfully clear2 but it was as it were deliberately colourless4 ,all are now agreed that the greatest art of the age was the art of public buildings2 the popular and communal art of architecture4 ,but it was not an age for the art of portrait-painting4 ,yet the friends of ,st4 ,francis have really contrived to leave behind a portrait2 something almost resembling a devout and affectionate caricature4 ,there are lines and colours in it that are personal almost to the extent of being perverse1 if one can use the word perversity of an inversion that was also a conversion4 ,even among the saints he has the air of a sort of eccentric1 if one may use the word of one whose eccentricity consisted in always turning towards the centre4 ,before resuming the narrative of his first adventures1 and the building of the great brotherhood which was the beginning of so merciful a revolution1 ,i think it well to complete this imperfect personal portrait here2 and having attempted in the last chapter a tentative description of the process1 to add in this chapter a few touches to describe the result4 ,i mean by the result the real man as he was after his first formative experiences2 the man whom men met walking about on the ,italian roads in his brown tunic tied with a rope4 ,for that man1 saving the grace of ,god1 is the explanation of all that followed2 men acted quite differently according to whether they had met him or not4 ,if we see afterwards a vast tumult1 an appeal to the ,pope1 mobs of men in brown habits besieging the seats of authority1 ,papal pronouncements1 heretical sessions1 trial and triumphant survival1 the world full of a new movement1 the friar a household word in every corner of ,europe1 and if we ask why all this happened1 we can only approximate to any answer to our own question if we can1 in some faint and indirect imaginative fashion1 hear one human voice or see one human face under a hood4 ,there is no answer except that ,francis ,bernardone had happened2 and we must try in some sense to see what we should have seen if he had happened to us4 ,in other words1 after some groping suggestions about his life from the inside1 we must again consider it from the outside2 as if he were a stranger coming up the road towards us1 along the hills of ,umbria1 between the olives or the vines4 ,francis of ,assisi was slight in figure with that sort of slightness which1 combined with so much vivacity1 gives the impression of smallness4 ,he was probably taller than he looked2 middle-sized1 his biographers say2 he was certainly very active and1 considering what he went through1 must have been tolerably tough4 ,he was of the brownish ,southern colouring1 with a dark beard thin and pointed such as appears in pictures under the hoods of elves2 and his eyes glowed with the fire that fretted him night and day4 ,there is something about the description of all he said and did which suggests that1 even more than most ,italians1 he turned naturally to a passionate pantomime of gestures4 ,if this was so it is equally certain that with him1 even more than with most ,italians1 the gestures were all gestures of politeness or hospitality4 ,and both these facts1 the vivacity and the courtesy1 are the outward signs of something that mark him out very distinctively from many who might appear to be more of his kind than they really are4 ,it is truly said that ,francis of ,assisi was one of the founders of the medieval drama1 and therefore of the modern drama4 ,he was the very reverse of a theatrical person in the selfish sense2 but for all that he was pre-eminently a dramatic person4 ,this side of him can best be suggested by taking what is commonly regarded as a reposeful quality2 what is commonly described as a love of nature4 ,we are compelled to use the term2 and it is entirely the wrong term4 ,st4 ,francis was not a lover of nature4 ,properly understood1 a lover of nature was precisely what he was not4 ,the phrase implies accepting the material universe as a vague environment1 a sort of sentimental pantheism4 ,in the romantic period of literature1 in the age of ,byron and ,scott1 it was easy enough to imagine that a hermit in the ruins of a chapel 7preferably by moonlight7 might find peace and a mild pleasure in the harmony of solemn forests and silent stars1 while he pondered over some scroll or illuminated volume1 about the liturgical nature of which the author was a little vague4 ,in short1 the hermit might love nature as a background4 ,now for ,st4 ,francis nothing was ever in the background4 ,we might say that his mind had no background1 except perhaps that divine darkness out of which the divine love had called up every coloured creature one by one4 ,he saw everything as dramatic1 distinct from its setting1 not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play4 ,a bird went by him like an arrow2 something with a story and a purpose1 though it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death4 ,a bush could stop him like a brigand2 and indeed he was as ready to welcome the brigand as the bush4 ,in a word1 we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees4 ,st4 ,francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees4 ,he wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing1 being a child of ,god and therefore a brother or sister of man4 ,but he did not want to stand against a piece of stage scenery used merely as a background1 and inscribed in a general fashion3 ,scene2 a wood4 ,in this sense we might say that he was too dramatic for the drama4 ,the scenery would have come to life in his comedies2 the walls would really have spoken like ,snout the ,tinker and the trees would really have come walking to ,dunsinane4 ,everything would have been in the foreground2 and in that sense in the footlights4 ,everything would be in every sense a character4 ,this is the quality in which1 as a poet1 he is the very opposite of a pantheist4 ,he did not call nature his mother2 he called a particular donkey his brother or a particular sparrow his sister4 ,if he had called a pelican his aunt or an elephant his uncle1 as he might possibly have done1 he would still have meant that they were particular creatures assigned by their ,creator to particular places2 not mere expressions of the evolutionary energy of things4 ,that is where his mysticism is so close to the common sense of the child4 ,a child has no difficulty about understanding that ,god made the dog and the cat2 though he is well aware that the making of dogs and cats out of nothing is a mysterious process beyond his own imagination4 ,but no child would understand what you meant if you mixed up the dog and the cat and everything else into one monster with a myriad legs and called it nature4 ,the child would resolutely refuse to make head or tail of any such animal4 ,st4 ,francis was a mystic1 but he believed in mysticism and not in mystification4 ,as a mystic he was the mortal enemy of all those mystics who melt away the edges of things and dissolve an entity into its environment4 ,he was a mystic of the daylight and the darkness2 but not a mystic of the twilight4 ,he was the very contrary of that sort of oriental visionary who is only a mystic because he is too much of a sceptic to be a materialist4 ,st4 ,francis was emphatically a realist1 using the word realist in its much more real medieval sense4 ,in this matter he really was akin to the best spirit of his age1 which had just won its victory over the nominalism of the twelfth century4 ,in this indeed there was something symbolic in the contemporary art and decoration of his period2 as in the art of heraldry4 ,the ,franciscan birds and beasts were really rather like heraldic birds and beasts2 not in the sense of being fabulous animals but in the sense of being treated as if they were facts1 clear and positive and unaffected by the illusions of atmosphere and perspective4 ,in that sense he did see a bird sable on a field azure or a sheep argent on a field vert4 ,but the heraldry of humility was richer than the heraldry of pride2 for it saw all these things that ,god had given as something more precious and unique than the blazonry that princes and peers had only given to themselves4 ,indeed out of the depths of that surrender it rose higher than the highest titles of the feudal age2 than the laurel of ,csar or the ,iron ,crown of ,lombardy4 ,it is an example of extremes that meet1 that the ,little ,poor ,man1 who had stripped himself of everything and named himself as nothing1 took the same title that has been the wild vaunt of the vanity of the gorgeous ,asiatic autocrat1 and called himself the ,brother of the ,sun and ,moon4 ,this quality1 of something outstanding and even startling in things as ,st4 ,francis saw them1 is here important as illustrating a character in his own life4 ,as he saw all things dramatically1 so he himself was always dramatic4 ,we have to assume throughout1 needless to say1 that he was a poet and can only be understood as a poet4 ,but he had one poetic privilege denied to most poets4 ,in that respect indeed he might be called the one happy poet among all the unhappy poets of the world4 ,he was a poet whose whole life was a poem4 ,he was not so much a minstrel merely singing his own songs as a dramatist capable of acting the whole of his own play4 ,the things he said were more imaginative than the things he wrote4 ,the things he did were more imaginative than the things he said4 ,his whole course through life was a series of scenes in which he had a sort of perpetual luck in bringing things to a beautiful crisis4 ,to talk about the art of living has come to sound rather artificial than artistic4 ,but ,st4 ,francis did in a definite sense make the very act of living an art1 though it was an unpremeditated art4 ,many of his acts will seem grotesque and puzzling to a rationalistic taste4 ,but they were always acts and not explanations2 and they always meant what he meant them to mean4 ,the amazing vividness with which he stamped himself on the memory and imagination of mankind is very largely due to the fact that he was seen again and again under such dramatic conditions4 ,from the moment when he rent his robes and flung them at his father's feet to the moment when he stretched himself in death on the bare earth in the pattern of the cross1 his life was made up of these unconscious attitudes and unhesitating gestures4 ,it would be easy to fill page after page with examples2 but ,i will here pursue the method found convenient everywhere in this short sketch1 and take one typical example1 dwelling on it with a little more detail than would be possible in a catalogue1 in the hope of making the meaning more clear4 ,the example taken here occurred in the last days of his life1 but it refers back in a rather curious fashion to the first2 and rounds off the remarkable unity of that romance of religion4 ,the phrase about his brotherhood with the sun and moon1 and with the water and the fire1 occurs of course in his famous poem called the ,canticle of the ,creatures or the ,canticle of the ,sun4 ,he sang it wandering in the meadows in the sunnier season of his own career1 when he was pouring upwards into the sky all the passions of a poet4 ,it is a supremely characteristic work1 and much of ,st4 ,francis could be reconstructed from that work alone4 ,though in some ways the thing is as simple and straightforward as a ballad1 there is a delicate instinct of differentiation in it4 ,notice1 for instance1 the sense of sex in inanimate things1 which goes far beyond the arbitrary genders of a grammar4 ,it was not for nothing that he called fire his brother1 fierce and gay and strong1 and water his sister1 pure and clear and inviolate4 ,remember that ,st4 ,francis was neither encumbered nor assisted by all that ,greek and ,roman polytheism turned into allegory1 which has been to ,european poetry often an inspiration1 too often a convention4 ,whether he gained or lost by his contempt of learning1 it never occurred to him to connect ,neptune and the nymphs with the water or ,vulcan and the ,cyclops with the flame4 ,this point exactly illustrates what has already been suggested2 that1 so far from being a revival of paganism1 the ,franciscan renascence was a sort of fresh start and first awakening after a forgetfulness of paganism4 ,certainly it is responsible for a certain freshness in the thing itself4 ,anyhow ,st4 ,francis was1 as it were1 the founder of a new folk-lore2 but he could distinguish his mermaids from his mermen and his witches from his wizards4 ,in short1 he had to make his own mythology2 but he knew at a glance the goddesses from the gods4 ,this fanciful instinct for the sexes is not the only example of an imaginative instinct of the kind4 ,there is just the same quaint felicity in the fact that he singles out the sun with a slightly more courtly title besides that of brother2 a phrase that one king might use of another1 corresponding to ,monsieur notre frre4 ,it is like a faint half ironic shadow of the shining primacy that it had held in the pagan heavens4 ,a bishop is said to have complained of a ,nonconformist saying ,paul instead of ,saint ,paul2 and to have added ,he might at least have called him ,mr4 ,paul4 ,so ,st4 ,francis is free of all obligation to cry out in praise or terror on the ,lord ,god ,apollo1 but in his new nursery heavens1 he salutes him as ,mr4 ,sun4 ,those are the things in which he has a sort of inspired infancy1 only to be paralleled in nursery tales4 ,something of the same hazy but healthy awe makes the story of ,brer ,fox and ,brer ,rabbit refer respectfully to ,mr4 ,man4 ,this poem1 full of the mirth of youth and the memories of childhood1 runs through his whole life like a refrain1 and scraps of it turn up continually in the ordinary habit of his talk4 ,perhaps the last appearance of its special language was in an incident that has always seemed to me intensely impressive1 and is at any rate very illustrative of the great manner and gesture of which ,i speak4 ,impressions of that kind are a matter of imagination and in that sense of taste4 ,it is idle to argue about them2 for it is the whole point of them that they have passed beyond words2 and even when they use words1 seem to be completed by some ritual movement like a blessing or a blow4 ,so1 in a supreme example1 there is something far past all exposition1 something like the sweeping movement and mighty shadow of a hand1 darkening even the darkness of ,gethsemane2 ,sleep on now1 and take your rest4444 ,yet there are people who have started to paraphrase and expand the story of the ,passion4 ,st4 ,francis was a dying man4 ,we might say he was an old man1 at the time this typical incident occurred2 but in fact he was only prematurely old2 for he was not fifty when he died1 worn out with his fighting and fasting life4 ,but when he came down from the awful asceticism and more awful revelation of ,alverno1 he was a broken man4 ,as will be apparent when these events are touched on in their turn1 it was not only sickness and bodily decay that may well have darkened his life2 he had been recently disappointed in his main mission to end the ,crusades by the conversion of ,islam2 he had been still more disappointed by the signs of compromise and a more political or practical spirit in his own order2 he had spent his last energies in protest4 ,at this point he was told that he was going blind4 ,if the faintest hint has been given here of what ,st4 ,francis felt about the glory and pageantry of earth and sky1 about the heraldic shape and colour and symbolism of birds and beasts and flowers1 some notion may be formed of what it meant to him to go blind4 ,yet the remedy might well have seemed worse than the disease4 ,the remedy1 admittedly an uncertain remedy1 was to cauterise the eye1 and that without any ansthetic4 ,in other words it was to burn his living eyeballs with a red-hot iron4 ,many of the tortures of martyrdom1 which he envied in martyrology and sought vainly in ,syria1 can have been no worse4 ,when they took the brand from the furnace1 he rose as with an urbane gesture and spoke as to an invisible presence3 ,brother ,fire1 ,god made you beautiful and strong and useful2 ,i pray you be courteous with me4 ,if there be any such thing as the art of life1 it seems to me that such a moment was one of its masterpieces4 ,not to many poets has it been given to remember their own poetry at such a moment1 still less to live one of their own poems4 ,even ,william ,blake would have been disconcerted if1 while he was re-reading the noble lines ,tiger1 tiger1 burning bright1 a real large live ,bengal tiger had put his head in at the window of the cottage in ,felpham1 evidently with every intention of biting his head off4 ,he might have wavered before politely saluting it1 above all by calmly completing the recitation of the poem to the quadruped to whom it was dedicated4 ,shelley1 when he wished to be a cloud or a leaf carried before the wind1 might have been mildly surprised to find himself turning slowly head over heels in mid air a thousand feet above the sea4 ,even ,keats1 knowing that his hold on life was a frail one1 might have been disturbed to discover that the true1 the blushful ,hippocrene of which he had just partaken freely had indeed contained a drug1 which really ensured that he should cease upon the midnight with no pain4 ,for ,francis there was no drug2 and for ,francis there was plenty of pain4 ,but his first thought was one of his first fancies from the songs of his youth4 ,he remembered the time when a flame was a flower1 only the most glorious and gaily coloured of the flowers in the garden of ,god2 and when that shining thing returned to him in the shape of an instrument of torture1 he hailed it from afar like an old friend1 calling it by the nickname which might most truly be called its ,christian name4 ,that is only one incident out of a life of such incidents2 and ,i have selected it partly because it shows what is meant here by that shadow of gesture there is in all his words1 the dramatic gesture of the south2 and partly because its special reference to courtesy covers the next fact to be noted4 ,the popular instinct of ,st4 ,francis1 and his perpetual preoccupation with the idea of brotherhood1 will be entirely misunderstood if it is understood in the sense of what is often called camaraderie2 the back-slapping sort of brotherhood4 ,frequently from the enemies and too frequently from the friends of the democratic ideal1 there has come a notion that this note is necessary to that ideal4 ,it is assumed that equality means all men being equally uncivil1 whereas it obviously ought to mean all men being equally civil4 ,such people have forgotten the very meaning and derivation of the word civility1 if they do not see that to be uncivil is to be uncivic4 ,but anyhow that was not the equality which ,francis of ,assisi encouraged2 but an equality of the opposite kind2 it was a camaraderie actually founded on courtesy4 ,even in that fairy borderland of his mere fancies about flowers and animals and even inanimate things1 he retained this permanent posture of a sort of deference4 ,a friend of mine said that somebody was the sort of man who apologises to the cat4 ,st4 ,francis really would have apologised to the cat4 ,when he was about to preach in a wood full of the chatter of birds1 he said1 with a gentle gesture ,little sisters1 if you have now had your say1 it is time that ,i also should be heard4 ,and all the birds were silent2 as ,i for one can very easily believe4 ,in deference to my special design of making matters intelligible to average modernity1 ,i have treated separately the subject of the miraculous powers that ,st4 ,francis most certainly possessed4 ,but even apart from any miraculous powers1 men of that magnetic sort1 with that intense interest in animals1 often have an extraordinary power over them4 ,st4 ,francis's power was always exercised with this elaborate politeness4 ,much of it was doubtless a sort of symbolic joke1 a pious pantomime intended to convey the vital distinction in his divine mission1 that he not only loved but reverenced ,god in all his creatures4 ,in this sense he had the air not only of apologising to the cat or to the birds1 but of apologising to a chair for sitting on it or to a table for sitting down at it4 ,anyone who had followed him through life merely to laugh at him1 as a sort of lovable lunatic1 might easily have had an impression as of a lunatic who bowed to every post or took off his hat to every tree4 ,this was all a part of his instinct for imaginative gesture4 ,he taught the world a large part of its lesson by a sort of divine dumb alphabet4 ,but if there was this ceremonial element even in lighter or lesser matters1 its significance became far more serious in the serious work of his life1 which was an appeal to humanity1 or rather to human beings4 ,i have said that ,st4 ,francis deliberately did not see the wood for the trees4 ,it is even more true that he deliberately did not see the mob for the men4 ,what distinguishes this very genuine democrat from any mere demagogue is that he never either deceived or was deceived by the illusion of mass-suggestion4 ,whatever his taste in monsters1 he never saw before him a many-headed beast4 ,he only saw the image of ,god multiplied but never monotonous4 ,to him a man was always a man and did not disappear in a dense crowd any more than in a desert4 ,he honoured all men2 that is1 he not only loved but respected them all4 ,what gave him his extraordinary personal power was this2 that from the ,pope to the beggar1 from the sultan of ,syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood1 there was never a man who looked into those brown burning eyes without being certain that ,francis ,bernardone was really interested in him2 in his own inner individual life from the cradle to the grave2 that he himself was being valued and taken seriously1 and not merely added to the spoils of some social policy or the names in some clerical document4 ,now for this particular moral and religious idea there is no external expression except courtesy4 ,exhortation does not express it1 for it is not mere abstract enthusiasm2 beneficence does not express it1 for it is not mere pity4 ,it can only be conveyed by a certain grand manner which may be called good manners4 ,we may say if we like that ,st4 ,francis1 in the bare and barren simplicity of his life1 had clung to one rag of luxury2 the manners of a court4 ,but whereas in a court there is one king and a hundred courtiers1 in this story there was one courtier1 moving among a hundred kings4 ,for he treated the whole mob of men as a mob of kings4 ,and this was really and truly the only attitude that will appeal to that part of man to which he wished to appeal4 ,it cannot be done by giving gold or even bread2 for it is a proverb that any reveller may fling largesse in mere scorn4 ,it cannot even be done by giving time and attention2 for any number of philanthropists and benevolent bureaucrats do such work with a scorn far more cold and horrible in their hearts4 ,no plans or proposals or efficient rearrangements will give back to a broken man his self-respect and sense of speaking with an equal4 ,one gesture will do it4 ,with that gesture ,francis of ,assisi moved among men2 and it was soon found to have something in it of magic and to act1 in a double sense1 like a charm4 ,but it must always be conceived as a completely natural gesture2 for indeed it was almost a gesture of apology4 ,he must be imagined as moving thus swiftly through the world with a sort of impetuous politeness2 almost like the movement of a man who stumbles on one knee half in haste and half in obeisance4 ,the eager face under the brown hood was that of a man always going somewhere1 as if he followed as well as watched the flight of the birds4 ,and this sense of motion is indeed the meaning of the whole revolution that he made2 for the work that has now to be described was of the nature of an earthquake or a volcano1 an explosion that drove outwards with dynamic energy the forces stored up by ten centuries in the monastic fortress or arsenal and scattered all its riches recklessly to the ends of the earth4 ,in a better sense than the antithesis commonly conveys1 it is true to say that what ,st4 ,benedict had stored ,st4 ,francis scattered2 but in the world of spiritual things what had been stored into the barns like grain was scattered over the world as seed4 ,the servants of ,god who had been a besieged garrison became a marching army2 the ways of the world were filled as with thunder with the trampling of their feet and far ahead of that ever swelling host went a man singing2 as simply he had sung that morning in the winter woods1 where he walked alone4 ,chapter ,,vii ,the ,three ,orders ,there is undoubtedly a sense in which two is company and three is none2 there is also another sense in which three is company and four is none1 as is proved by the procession of historic and fictitious figures moving three deep1 the famous trios like the ,three ,musketeers or the ,three ,soldiers of ,kipling4 ,but there is yet another and a different sense in which four is company and three is none2 if we use the word company in the vaguer sense of a crowd or a mass4 ,with the fourth man enters the shadow of a mob2 the group is no longer one of three individuals only conceived individually4 ,that shadow of the fourth man fell across the little hermitage of the ,portiuncula when a man named ,egidio1 apparently a poor workman1 was invited by ,st4 ,francis to enter4 ,he mingled without difficulty with the merchant and the canon who had already become the companions of ,francis2 but with his coming an invisible line was crossed2 for it must have been felt by this time that the growth of that small group had become potentially infinite1 or at least that its outline had become permanently indefinite4 ,it may have been in the time of that transition that ,francis had another of his dreams full of voices2 but now the voices were a clamour of the tongues of all nations1 ,frenchmen and ,italians and ,english and ,spanish and ,germans1 telling of the glory of ,god each in his own tongue2 a new ,pentecost and a happier ,babel4 ,before describing the first steps he took to regularise the growing group1 it is well to have a rough grasp of what he conceived that group to be4 ,he did not call his followers monks2 and it is not clear1 at this time at least1 that he even thought of them as monks4 ,he called them by a name which is generally rendered in ,english as the ,friars ,minor2 but we shall be much closer to the atmosphere of his own mind if we render it almost literally as ,the ,little ,brothers4 ,presumably he was already resolved1 indeed1 that they should take the three vows of poverty1 chastity and obedience which had always been the mark of a monk4 ,but it would seem that he was not so much afraid of the idea of a monk as of the idea of an abbot4 ,he was afraid that the great spiritual magistracies which had given even to their holiest possessors at least a sort of impersonal and corporate pride1 would import an element of pomposity that would spoil his extremely and almost extravagantly simple version of the life of humility4 ,but the supreme difference between his discipline and the discipline of the old monastic system was concerned1 of course1 with the idea that the monks were to become migratory and almost nomadic instead of stationary4 ,they were to mingle with the world2 and to this the more old-fashioned monk would naturally reply by asking how they were to mingle with the world without becoming entangled with the world4 ,it was a much more real question than a loose religiosity is likely to realise2 but ,st4 ,francis had his answer to it1 of his own individual sort2 and the interest of the problem is in that highly individual answer4 ,the good ,bishop of ,assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the ,little ,brothers lived at the ,portiuncula1 without comforts1 without possessions1 eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground4 ,st4 ,francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone4 ,he said1 ,if we had any possessions1 we should need weapons and laws to defend them4 ,that sentence is the clue to the whole policy that he pursued4 ,it rested upon a real piece of logic2 and about that he was never anything but logical4 ,he was ready to own himself wrong about anything else2 but he was quite certain he was right about this particular rule4 ,he was only once seen angry2 and that was when there was talk of an exception to the rule4 ,his argument was this3 that the dedicated man might go anywhere among any kind of men1 even the worst kind of men1 so long as there was nothing by which they could hold him4 ,if he had any ties or needs like ordinary men1 he would become like ordinary men4 ,st4 ,francis was the last man in the world to think any the worse of ordinary men for being ordinary4 ,they had more affection and admiration from him than they are ever likely to have again4 ,but for his own particular purpose of stirring up the world to a new spiritual enthusiasm1 he saw with a logical clarity that was quite reverse of fanatical or sentimental1 that friars must not become like ordinary men2 that the salt must not lose its savour even to turn into human nature's daily food4 ,and the difference between a friar and an ordinary man was really that a friar was freer than an ordinary man4 ,it was necessary that he should be free from the cloister2 but it was even more important that he should be free from the world4 ,it is perfectly sound common sense to say that there is a sense in which the ordinary man cannot be free from the world2 or rather ought not to be free from the world4 ,the feudal world in particular was one labyrinthine system of dependence2 but it was not only the feudal world that went to make up the medieval world nor the medieval world that went to make up the whole world2 and the whole world is full of this fact4 ,family life as much as feudal life is in its nature a system of dependence4 ,modern trade unions as much as medieval guilds are interdependent among themselves even in order to be independent of others4 ,in medieval as in modern life1 even where these limitations do exist for the sake of liberty1 they have in them a considerable element of luck4 ,they are partly the result of circumstances2 sometimes the almost unavoidable result of circumstances4 ,so the twelfth century had been the age of vows2 and there was something of relative freedom in that feudal gesture of the vow2 for no man asks vows from slaves any more than from spades4 ,still1 in practice1 a man rode to war in support of the ancient house of the ,column or behind the ,great ,dog of the ,stairway largely because he had been born in a certain city or countryside4 ,but no man need obey little ,francis in the old brown coat unless he chose4 ,even in his relations with his chosen leader he was in one sense relatively free1 compared with the world around him4 ,he was obedient but not dependent4 ,and he was as free as the wind1 he was almost wildly free1 in his relation to that world around him4 ,the world around him was1 as has been noted1 a network of feudal and family and other forms of dependence4 ,the whole idea of ,st4 ,francis was that the ,little ,brothers should be like little fishes who could go freely in and out of that net4 ,they could do so precisely because they were small fishes and in that sense even slippery fishes4 ,there was nothing that the world could hold them by2 for the world catches us mostly by the fringes of our garments1 the futile externals of our lives4 ,one of the ,franciscans says later1 ,a monk should own nothing but his harp2 meaning1 ,i suppose1 that he should value nothing but his song1 the song with which it was his business as a minstrel to serenade every castle and cottage1 the song of the joy of the ,creator in his creation and the beauty of the brotherhood of men4 ,in imagining the life of this sort of visionary vagabond1 we may already get a glimpse also of the practical side of that asceticism which puzzles those who think themselves practical4 ,a man had to be thin to pass always through the bars and out of the cage2 he had to travel light in order to ride so fast and so far4 ,it was the whole calculation1 so to speak1 of that innocent cunning1 that the world was to be outflanked and outwitted by him1 and be embarrassed about what to do with him4 ,you could not threaten to starve a man who was ever striving to fast4 ,you could not ruin him and reduce him to beggary1 for he was already a beggar4 ,there was a very lukewarm satisfaction even in beating him with a stick1 when he only indulged in little leaps and cries of joy because indignity was his only dignity4 ,you could not put his head in a halter without the risk of putting it in a halo4 ,but one distinction between the old monks and the new friars counted especially in the matter of practicality and especially of promptitude4 ,the old fraternities with their fixed habitations and enclosed existence had the limitations of ordinary householders4 ,however simply they lived there must be a certain number of cells or a certain number of beds or at least a certain cubic space for a certain number of brothers2 their numbers therefore depended on their land and building material4 ,but since a man could become a ,franciscan by merely promising to take his chance of eating berries in a lane or begging a crust from a kitchen1 of sleeping under a hedge or sitting patiently on a doorstep1 there was no economic reason why there should not be any number of such eccentric enthusiasts within any short period of time4 ,it must also be remembered that the whole of this rapid development was full of a certain kind of democratic optimism that really was part of the personal character of ,st4 ,francis4 ,his very asceticism was in one sense the height of optimism4 ,he demanded a great deal of human nature not because he despised it but rather because he trusted it4 ,he was expecting a very great deal from the extraordinary men who followed him2 but he was also expecting a good deal from the ordinary men to whom he sent them4 ,he asked the laity for food as confidently as he asked the fraternity for fasting4 ,but he counted on the hospitality of humanity because he really did regard every house as the house of a friend4 ,he really did love and honour ordinary men and ordinary things2 indeed we may say that he only sent out the extraordinary men to encourage men to be ordinary4 ,this paradox may be more exactly stated or explained when we come to deal with the very interesting matter of the ,third ,order1 which was designed to assist ordinary men to be ordinary with an extraordinary exultation4 ,the point at issue at present is the audacity and simplicity of the ,franciscan plan for quartering its spiritual soldiery upon the population2 not by force but by persuasion1 and even by the persuasion of impotence4 ,it was an act of confidence and therefore a compliment4 ,it was completely successful4 ,it was an example of something that clung about ,st4 ,francis always2 a kind of tact that looked like luck because it was as simple and direct as a thunderbolt4 ,there are many examples in his private relations of this sort of tactless tact2 this surprise effected by striking at the heart of the matter4 ,it is said that a young friar was suffering from a sort of sulks between morbidity and humility1 common enough in youth and hero-worship1 in which he had got it into his head that his hero hated or despised him4 ,we can imagine how tactfully social diplomatists would steer clear of scenes and excitements1 how cautiously psychologists would watch and handle such delicate cases4 ,francis suddenly walked up to the young man1 who was of course secretive and silent as the grave1 and said1 ,be not troubled in your thoughts for you are dear to me1 and even among the number of those who are most dear4 ,you know that you are worthy of my friendship and society2 therefore come to me1 in confidence1 whensoever you will1 and from friendship learn faith4 ,exactly as he spoke to that morbid boy he spoke to all mankind4 ,he always went to the point2 he always seemed at once more right and more simple than the person he was speaking to4 ,he seemed at once to be laying open his guard and yet lunging at the heart4 ,something in this attitude disarmed the world as it has never been disarmed again4 ,he was better than other men2 he was a benefactor of other men2 and yet he was not hated4 ,the world came into church by a newer and nearer door2 and by friendship it learnt faith4 ,it was while the little knot of people at the ,portiuncula was still small enough to gather in a small room that ,st4 ,francis resolved on his first important and even sensational stroke4 ,it is said that there were only twelve ,franciscans in the whole world when he decided to march1 as it were1 on ,rome and found a ,franciscan order4 ,it would seem that this appeal to remote headquarters was not generally regarded as necessary2 possibly something could have been done in a secondary way under the ,bishop of ,assisi and the local clergy4 ,it would seem even more probable that people thought it somewhat unnecessary to trouble the supreme tribunal of ,christendom about what a dozen chance men chose to call themselves4 ,but ,francis was obstinate and as it were blind on this point2 and his brilliant blindness is exceedingly characteristic of him4 ,a man satisfied with small things1 or even in love with small things1 he yet never felt quite as we do about the disproportion between small things and large4 ,he never saw things to scale in our sense1 but with a dizzy disproportion which makes the mind reel4 ,sometimes it seems merely out of drawing like a gaily coloured medieval map2 and then again it seems to have escaped from everything like a short cut in the fourth dimension4 ,he is said to have made a journey to interview the ,emperor1 throned among his armies under the eagle of the ,holy ,roman ,empire1 to intercede for the lives of certain little birds4 ,he was quite capable of facing fifty emperors to intercede for one bird4 ,he started out with two companions to convert the ,mahomedan world4 ,he started out with eleven companions to ask the ,pope to make a new monastic world4 ,innocent ,,iii41 the great ,pope1 according to ,bonaventura1 was walking on the terrace of ,st4 ,john ,lateran1 doubtless revolving the great political questions which troubled his reign1 when there appeared abruptly before him a person in peasant costume whom he took to be some sort of shepherd4 ,he appears to have got rid of the shepherd with all convenient speed2 possibly he formed the opinion that the shepherd was mad4 ,anyhow he thought no more about it until1 says the great ,franciscan biographer1 he dreamed that night a strange dream4 ,he fancied that he saw the whole huge ancient temple of ,st4 ,john ,lateran1 on whose high terraces he had walked so securely1 leaning horribly and crooked against the sky as if all its domes and turrets were stooping before an earthquake4 ,then he looked again and saw that a human figure was holding it up like a living caryatid2 and the figure was that of the ragged shepherd or peasant from whom he had turned away on the terrace4 ,whether this be a fact or a figure it is a very true figure of the abrupt simplicity with which ,francis won the attention and the favour of ,rome4 ,his first friend seems to have been the ,cardinal ,giovanni di ,san ,paolo who pleaded for the ,franciscan idea before a conclave of ,cardinals summoned for the purpose4 ,it is interesting to note that the doubts thrown upon it seem to have been chiefly doubts about whether the rule was not too hard for humanity1 for the ,catholic ,church is always on the watch against excessive asceticism and its evils4 ,probably they meant1 especially when they said it was unduly hard1 that it was unduly dangerous4 ,for a certain element that can only be called danger is what marks the innovation as compared with older institutions of the kind4 ,in one sense indeed the friar was almost the opposite of the monk4 ,the value of the old monasticism had been that there was not only an ethical but an economic repose4 ,out of that repose had come the works for which the world will never be sufficiently grateful1 the preservation of the classics1 the beginning of the ,gothic1 the schemes of science and philosophies1 the illuminated manuscripts and the coloured glass4 ,the whole point of a monk was that his economic affairs were settled for good2 he knew where he would get his supper1 though it was a very plain supper4 ,but the whole point of a friar was that he did not know where he would get his supper4 ,there was always a possibility that he might get no supper4 ,there was an element of what would be called romance1 as of the gipsy or adventurer4 ,but there was also an element of potential tragedy1 as of the tramp or the casual labourer4 ,so the ,cardinals of the thirteenth century were filled with compassion1 seeing a few men entering of their own free will that estate to which the poor of the twentieth century are daily driven by cold coercion and moved on by the police4 ,cardinal ,san ,paolo seems to have argued more or less in this manner3 it may be a hard life1 but after all it is the life apparently described as ideal in the ,gospel2 make what compromises you think wise or humane about that ideal2 but do not commit yourselves to saying that men shall not fulfil that ideal if they can4 ,we shall see the importance of this argument when we come to the whole of that higher aspect of the life of ,st4 ,francis which may be called the ,imitation of ,christ4 ,the upshot of the discussion was that the ,pope gave his verbal approval to the project and promised a more definite endorsement1 if the movement should grow to more considerable proportions4 ,it is probable that ,innocent1 who was himself a man of no ordinary mentality1 had very little doubt that it would do so2 anyhow he was not left long in doubt before it did do so4 ,the next passage in the history of the order is simply the story of more and more people flocking to its standard2 and as has already been remarked1 once it had begun to grow1 it could in its nature grow much more quickly than any ordinary society requiring ordinary funds and public buildings4 ,even the return of the twelve pioneers from their papal audience seems to have been a sort of triumphal procession4 ,in one place in particular1 it is said1 the whole population of a town1 men1 women and children1 turned out1 leaving their work and wealth and homes exactly as they stood and begging to be taken into the army of ,god on the spot4 ,according to the story1 it was on this occasion that ,st4 ,francis first foreshadowed his idea of the ,third ,order which enabled men to share in the movement without leaving the homes and habits of normal humanity4 ,for the moment it is most important to regard this story as one example of the riot of conversion with which he was already filling all the roads of ,italy4 ,it was a world of wandering2 friars perpetually coming and going in all the highways and byways1 seeking to ensure that any man who met one of them by chance should have a spiritual adventure4 ,the ,first ,order of ,st4 ,francis had entered history4 ,this rough outline can only be rounded off here with some description of the ,second and ,third ,orders1 though they were founded later and at separate times4 ,the former was an order for women and owed its existence1 of course1 to the beautiful friendship of ,st4 ,francis and ,st4 ,clare4 ,there is no story about which even the most sympathetic critics of another creed have been more bewildered and misleading4 ,for there is no story that more clearly turns on that simple test which ,i have taken as crucial throughout this criticism4 ,i mean that what is the matter with these critics is that they will not believe that a heavenly love can be as real as an earthly love4 ,the moment it is treated as real1 like an earthly love1 their whole riddle is easily resolved4 ,a girl of seventeen1 named ,clare and belonging to one of the noble families of ,assisi1 was filled with an enthusiasm for the conventual life2 and ,francis helped her to escape from her home and to take up the conventual life4 ,if we like to put it so1 he helped her to elope into the cloister1 defying her parents as he had defied his father4 ,indeed the scene had many of the elements of a regular romantic elopement2 for she escaped through a hole in the wall1 fled through a wood and was received at midnight by the light of torches4 ,even ,mrs4 ,oliphant1 in her fine and delicate study of ,st4 ,francis1 calls it an incident which we can hardly record with satisfaction4 ,now about that incident ,i will here only say this4 ,if it had really been a romantic elopement and the girl had become a bride instead of a nun1 practically the whole modern world would have made her a heroine4 ,if the action of the ,friar towards ,clare had been the action of the ,friar towards ,juliet1 everybody would be sympathising with her exactly as they sympathise with ,juliet4 ,it is not conclusive to say that ,clare was only seventeen4 ,juliet was only fourteen4 ,girls married and boys fought in battles at such early ages in medieval times2 and a girl of seventeen in the thirteenth century was certainly old enough to know her own mind4 ,there cannot be the shadow of a doubt1 for any sane person considering subsequent events1 that ,st4 ,clare did know her own mind4 ,but the point for the moment is that modern romanticism entirely encourages such defiance of parents when it is done in the name of romantic love4 ,for it knows that romantic love is a reality1 but it does not know that divine love is a reality4 ,there may have been something to be said for the parents of ,clare2 there may have been something to be said for ,peter ,bernardone4 ,so there may have been a great deal to be said for the ,montagues or the ,capulets2 but the modern world does not want it said2 and does not say it4 ,the fact is that as soon as we assume for a moment as a hypothesis1 what ,st4 ,francis and ,st4 ,clare assumed all the time as an absolute1 that there is a direct divine relation more glorious than any romance1 the story of ,st4 ,clare's elopement is simply a romance with a happy ending2 and ,st4 ,francis is the ,st4 ,george or knight-errant who gave it a happy ending4 ,and seeing that some millions of men and women have lived and died treating this relation as a reality1 a man is not much of a philosopher if he cannot even treat it as a hypothesis4 ,for the rest1 we may at least assume that no friend of what is called the emancipation of women will regret the revolt of ,st4 ,clare4 ,she did most truly1 in the modern jargon1 live her own life1 the life that she herself wanted to lead1 as distinct from the life into which parental commands and conventional arrangements would have forced her4 ,she became the foundress of a great feminine movement which still profoundly affects the world2 and her place is with the powerful women of history4 ,it is not clear that she would have been so great or so useful if she had made a runaway match1 or even stopped at home and made a mariage de convenance4 ,so much any sensible man may well say considering the matter merely from the outside2 and ,i have no intention of attempting to consider it from the inside4 ,if a man may well doubt whether he is worthy to write a word about ,st4 ,francis1 he will certainly want words better than his own to speak of the friendship of ,st4 ,francis and ,st4 ,clare4 ,i have often remarked that the mysteries of this story are best expressed symbolically in certain silent attitudes and actions4 ,and ,i know no better symbol than that found by the felicity of popular legend1 which says that one night the people of ,assisi thought the trees and the holy house were on fire1 and rushed up to extinguish the conflagration4 ,but they found all quiet within1 where ,st4 ,francis broke bread with ,st4 ,clare at one of their rare meetings1 and talked of the love of ,god4 ,it would be hard to find a more imaginative image1 for some sort of utterly pure and disembodied passion1 than that red halo round the unconscious figures on the hill2 a flame feeding on nothing and setting the very air on fire4 ,but if the ,second ,order was the memorial of such an unearthly love1 the ,third ,order was as solid a memorial of a very solid sympathy with earthly loves and earthly lives4 ,the whole of this feature in ,catholic life1 the lay orders in touch with clerical orders1 is very little understood in ,protestant countries and very little allowed for in ,protestant history4 ,the vision which has been so faintly suggested in these pages has never been confined to monks or even to friars4 ,it has been an inspiration to innumerable crowds of ordinary married men and women2 living lives like our own1 only entirely different4 ,that morning glory which ,st4 ,francis spread over earth and sky has lingered as a secret sunshine under a multitude of roofs and in a multitude of rooms4 ,in societies like ours nothing is known of such a ,franciscan following4 ,nothing is known of such obscure followers2 and if possible less is known of the well-known followers4 ,if we imagine passing us in the street a pageant of the ,third ,order of ,st4 ,francis1 the famous figures would surprise us more than the strange ones4 ,for us it would be like the unmasking of some mighty secret society4 ,there rides ,st4 ,louis1 the great king1 lord of the higher justice whose scales hang crooked in favour of the poor4 ,there is ,dante crowned with laurel1 the poet who in his life of passions sang the praises of the ,lady ,poverty1 whose grey garment is lined with purple and all glorious within4 ,all sorts of great names from the most recent and rationalistic centuries would stand revealed2 the great ,galvani1 for instance1 the father of all electricity1 the magician who has made so many modern systems of stars and sounds4 ,so various a following would alone be enough to prove that ,st4 ,francis had no lack of sympathy with normal men1 if the whole of his own life did not prove it4 ,but in fact his life did prove it1 and that possibly in a more subtle sense4 ,there is1 ,i fancy1 some truth in the hint of one of his modern biographers1 that even his natural passions were singularly normal and even noble1 in the sense of turning towards things not unlawful in themselves but only unlawful for him4 ,nobody ever lived of whom we could less fitly use the word regret than ,francis of ,assisi4 ,though there was much that was romantic1 there was nothing in the least sentimental about his mood4 ,it was not melancholy enough for that4 ,he was of far too swift and rushing a temper to be troubled with doubts and reconsiderations about the race he ran2 though he had any amount of self-reproach about not running faster4 ,but it is true1 one suspects1 that when he wrestled with the devil1 as every man must to be worth calling a man1 the whispers referred mostly to those healthy instincts that he would have approved for others2 they bore no resemblance to that ghastly painted paganism which sent its demoniac courtesans to plague ,st4 ,anthony in the desert4 ,if ,st4 ,francis had only pleased himself1 it would have been with simpler pleasures4 ,he was moved to love rather than lust1 and by nothing wilder than wedding-bells4 ,it is suggested in that strange story of how he defied the devil by making images in the snow1 and crying out that these sufficed him for a wife and family4 ,it is suggested in the saying he used when disclaiming any security from sin1 ,i may yet have children2 almost as if it was of the children rather than the woman that he dreamed4 ,and this1 if it be true1 gives a final touch to the truth about his character4 ,there was so much about him of the spirit of the morning1 so much that was curiously young and clean1 that even what was bad in him was good4 ,as it was said of others that the light in their body was darkness1 so it may be said of this luminous spirit that the very shadows in his soul were of light4 ,evil itself could not come to him save in the form of a forbidden good2 and he could only be tempted by a sacrament4 ,chapter ,,viii ,the ,mirror of ,christ ,no man who has been given the freedom of the ,faith is likely to fall into those hole-and-corner extravagances in which later degenerate ,franciscans1 or rather ,fraticelli1 sought to concentrate entirely on ,st4 ,francis as a second ,christ1 the creator of a new gospel4 ,in fact any such notion makes nonsense of every motive in the man's life2 for no man would reverently magnify what he was meant to rival1 or only profess to follow what he existed to supplant4 ,on the contrary1 as will appear later1 this little study would rather specially insist that it was really the papal sagacity that saved the great ,franciscan movement for the whole world and the universal ,church1 and prevented it from petering out as that sort of stale and second-rate sect that is called a new religion4 ,everything that is written here must be understood not only as distinct from but diametrically opposed to the idolatry of the ,fraticelli4 ,the difference between ,christ and ,st4 ,francis was the difference between the ,creator and the creature2 and certainly no creature was ever so conscious of that colossal contrast as ,st4 ,francis himself4 ,but subject to this understanding1 it is perfectly true and it is vitally important that ,christ was the pattern on which ,st4 ,francis sought to fashion himself2 and that at many points their human and historical lives were even curiously coincident2 and above all1 that compared to most of us at least ,st4 ,francis is a most sublime approximation to his ,master1 and1 even in being an intermediary and a reflection1 is a splendid and yet a merciful ,mirror of ,christ4 ,and this truth suggests another1 which ,i think has hardly been noticed2 but which happens to be a highly forcible argument for the authority of ,christ being continuous in the ,catholic ,church4 ,cardinal ,newman wrote in his liveliest controversial work a sentence that might be a model of what we mean by saying that his creed tends to lucidity and logical courage4 ,in speaking of the ease with which truth may be made to look like its own shadow or sham1 he said1 ,and if ,antichrist is like ,christ1 ,christ ,i suppose is like ,antichrist4 ,mere religious sentiment might well be shocked at the end of the sentence2 but nobody could object to it except the logician who said that ,csar and ,pompey were very much alike1 especially ,pompey4 ,it may give a much milder shock if ,i say here1 what most of us have forgotten1 that if ,st4 ,francis was like ,christ1 ,christ was to that extent like ,st4 ,francis4 ,and my present point is that it is really very enlightening to realise that ,christ was like ,st4 ,francis4 ,what ,i mean is this2 that if men find certain riddles and hard sayings in the story of ,galilee1 and if they find the answers to those riddles in the story of ,assisi1 it really does show that a secret has been handed down in one religious tradition and no other4 ,it shows that the casket that was locked in ,palestine can be unlocked in ,umbria2 for the ,church is the keeper of the keys4 ,now in truth while it has always seemed natural to explain ,st4 ,francis in the light of ,christ1 it has not occurred to many people to explain ,christ in the light of ,st4 ,francis4 ,perhaps the word light is not here the proper metaphor2 but the same truth is admitted in the accepted metaphor of the mirror4 ,st4 ,francis is the mirror of ,christ rather as the moon is the mirror of the sun4 ,the moon is much smaller than the sun1 but it is also much nearer to us2 and being less vivid it is more visible4 ,exactly in the same sense ,st4 ,francis is nearer to us1 and being a mere man like ourselves is in that sense more imaginable4 ,being necessarily less of a mystery1 he does not1 for us1 so much open his mouth in mysteries4 ,yet as a matter of fact1 many minor things that seem mysteries in the mouth of ,christ would seem merely characteristic paradoxes in the mouth of ,st4 ,francis4 ,it seems natural to re-read the more remote incidents with the help of the more recent ones4 ,it is a truism to say that ,christ lived before ,christianity2 and it follows that as an historical figure ,he is a figure in heathen history4 ,i mean that the medium in which ,he moved was not the medium of ,christendom but of the old pagan empire2 and from that alone1 not to mention the distance of time1 it follows that ,his circumstances are more alien to us than those of an ,italian monk such as we might meet even to-day4 ,i suppose the most authoritative commentary can hardly be certain of the current or conventional weight of all ,his words or phrases2 of which of them would then have seemed a common allusion and which a strange fancy4 ,this archaic setting has left many of the sayings standing like hieroglyphics and subject to many and peculiar individual interpretations4 ,yet it is true of almost any of them that if we simply translate them into the ,umbrian dialect of the first ,franciscans1 they would seem like any other part of the ,franciscan story2 doubtless in one sense fantastic1 but quite familiar4 ,all sorts of critical controversies have revolved round the passage which bids men consider the lilies of the field and copy them in taking no thought for the morrow4 ,the sceptic has alternated between telling us to be true ,christians and do it1 and explaining that it is impossible to do4 ,when he is a communist as well as an atheist1 he is generally doubtful whether to blame us for preaching what is impracticable or for not instantly putting it into practice4 ,i am not going to discuss here the point of ethics and economics2 ,i merely remark that even those who are puzzled at the saying of ,christ would hardly pause in accepting it as a saying of ,st4 ,francis4 ,nobody would be surprised to find that he had said1 ,i beseech you1 little brothers1 that you be as wise as ,brother ,daisy and ,brother ,dandelion2 for never do they lie awake thinking of to-morrow1 yet they have gold crowns like kings and emperors or like ,charlemagne in all his glory4 ,even more bitterness and bewilderment has arisen about the command to turn the other cheek and to give the coat to the robber who has taken the cloak4 ,it is widely held to imply the wickedness of war among nations2 about which1 in itself1 not a word seems to have been said4 ,taken thus literally and universally1 it much more clearly implies the wickedness of all law and government4 ,yet there are many prosperous peacemakers who are much more shocked at the idea of using the brute force of soldiers against a powerful foreigner than they are at using the brute force of policemen against a poor fellow-citizen4 ,here again ,i am content to point out that the paradox becomes perfectly human and probable if addressed by ,francis to ,franciscans4 ,nobody would be surprised to read that ,brother ,juniper did then run after the thief that had stolen his hood1 beseeching him to take his gown also2 for so ,st4 ,francis had commanded him4 ,nobody would be surprised if ,st4 ,francis told a young noble1 about to be admitted to his company1 that so far from pursuing a brigand to recover his shoes1 he ought to pursue him to make him a present of his stockings4 ,we may like or not the atmosphere these things imply2 but we know what atmosphere they do imply4 ,we recognise a certain note as natural and clear as the note of a bird2 the note of ,st4 ,francis4 ,there is in it something of gentle mockery of the very idea of possessions2 something of a hope of disarming the enemy by generosity2 something of a humorous sense of bewildering the worldly with the unexpected2 something of the joy of carrying an enthusiastic conviction to a logical extreme4 ,but anyhow we have no difficulty in recognising it1 if we have read any of the literature of the ,little ,brothers and the movement that began in ,assisi4 ,it seems reasonable to infer that if it was this spirit that made such strange things possible in ,umbria1 it was the same spirit that made them possible in ,palestine4 ,if we hear the same unmistakable note and sense the same indescribable savour in two things at such a distance from each other1 it seems natural to suppose that the case that is more remote from our experience was like the case that is closer to our experience4 ,as the thing is explicable on the assumption that ,francis was speaking to ,franciscans1 it is not an irrational explanation to suggest that ,christ also was speaking to some dedicated band that had much the same function as ,franciscans4 ,in other words1 it seems only natural to hold1 as the ,catholic ,church has held1 that these counsels of perfection were part of a particular vocation to astonish and awaken the world4 ,but in any case it is important to note that when we do find these particular features1 with their seemingly fantastic fitness1 reappearing after more than a thousand years1 we find them produced by the same religious system which claims continuity and authority from the scenes in which they first appeared4 ,any number of philosophies will repeat the platitudes of ,christianity4 ,but it is the ancient ,church that can again startle the world with the paradoxes of ,christianity4 ,ubi ,petrus ibi ,franciscus4 ,but if we understand that it was truly under the inspiration of his divine ,master that ,st4 ,francis did these merely quaint or eccentric acts of charity1 we must understand that it was under the same inspiration that he did acts of self-denial and austerity4 ,it is clear that these more or less playful parables of the love of men were conceived after a close study of the ,sermon on the ,mount4 ,but it is evident that he made an even closer study of the silent sermon on that other mountain2 the mountain that was called ,golgotha4 ,here again he was speaking the strict historical truth1 when he said that in fasting or suffering humiliation he was but trying to do something of what ,christ did2 and here again it seems probable that as the same truth appears at the two ends of a chain of tradition1 the tradition has preserved the truth4 ,but the import of this fact at the moment affects the next phase in the personal history of the man himself4 ,for as it becomes clearer that his great communal scheme is an accomplished fact and past the peril of an early collapse1 as it becomes evident that there already is such a thing as an ,order of the ,friars ,minor1 this more individual and intense ambition of ,st4 ,francis emerges more and more4 ,so soon as he certainly has followers1 he does not compare himself with his followers1 towards whom he might appear as a master2 he compares himself more and more with his ,master1 towards whom he appears only as a servant4 ,this1 it may be said in passing1 is one of the moral and even practical conveniences of the ascetical privilege4 ,every other sort of superiority may be superciliousness4 ,but the saint is never supercilious1 for he is always by hypothesis in the presence of a superior4 ,the objection to an aristocracy is that it is a priesthood without a god4 ,but in any case the service to which ,st4 ,francis had committed himself was one which1 about this time1 he conceived more and more in terms of sacrifice and crucifixion4 ,he was full of the sentiment that he had not suffered enough to be worthy even to be a distant follower of his suffering ,god4 ,and this passage in his history may really be roughly summarised as the ,search for ,martyrdom4 ,this was the ultimate idea in the remarkable business of his expedition among the ,saracens in ,syria4 ,there were indeed other elements in his conception1 which are worthy of more intelligent understanding than they have often received4 ,his idea1 of course1 was to bring the ,crusades in a double sense to their end2 that is1 to reach their conclusion and to achieve their purpose4 ,only he wished to do it by conversion and not by conquest2 that is1 by intellectual and not material means4 ,the modern mind is hard to please2 and it generally calls the way of ,godfrey ferocious and the way of ,francis fanatical4 ,that is1 it calls any moral method unpractical1 when it has just called any practical method immoral4 ,but the idea of ,st4 ,francis was far from being a fanatical or necessarily even an unpractical idea2 though perhaps he saw the problem as rather too simple1 lacking the learning of his great inheritor ,raymond ,lully1 who understood more but has been quite as little understood4 ,the way he approached the matter was indeed highly personal and peculiar2 but that was true of almost everything he did4 ,it was in one way a simple idea1 as most of his ideas were simple ideas4 ,but it was not a silly idea2 there was a great deal to be said for it and it might have succeeded4 ,it was1 of course1 simply the idea that it is better to create ,christians than to destroy ,moslems4 ,if ,islam had been converted1 the world would have been immeasurably more united and happy2 for one thing1 three quarters of the wars of modern history would never have taken place4 ,it was not absurd to suppose that this might be effected1 without military force1 by missionaries who were also martyrs4 ,the ,church had conquered ,europe in that way and may yet conquer ,asia or ,africa in that way4 ,but when all this is allowed for1 there is still another sense in which ,st4 ,francis was not thinking of ,martyrdom as a means to an end1 but almost as an end in itself2 in the sense that to him the supreme end was to come closer to the example of ,christ4 ,through all his plunging and restless days ran the refrain3 ,i have not suffered enough2 ,i have not sacrificed enough2 ,i am not yet worthy even of the shadow of the crown of thorns4 ,he wandered about the valleys of the world looking for the hill that has the outline of a skull4 ,a little while before his final departure for the ,east a vast and triumphant assembly of the whole order had been held near the ,portiuncula2 and called ,the ,assembly of the ,straw ,huts1 from the manner in which that mighty army encamped in the field4 ,tradition says that it was on this occasion that ,st4 ,francis met ,st4 ,dominic for the first and last time4 ,it also says1 what is probable enough1 that the practical spirit of the ,spaniard was almost appalled at the devout irresponsibility of the ,italian1 who had assembled such a crowd without organising a commissariat4 ,dominic the ,spaniard was1 like nearly every ,spaniard1 a man with the mind of a soldier4 ,his charity took the practical form of provision and preparation4 ,but1 apart from the disputes about faith which such incidents open1 he probably did not understand in this case the power of mere popularity produced by mere personality4 ,in all his leaps in the dark1 ,francis had an extraordinary faculty of falling on his feet4 ,the whole countryside came down like a landslide to provide food and drink for this sort of pious picnic4 ,peasants brought waggons of wine and game2 great nobles walked about doing the work of footmen4 ,it was a very real victory for the ,franciscan spirit of a reckless faith not only in ,god but in man4 ,of course there is much doubt and dispute about the whole story and the whole relation of ,francis and ,dominic2 and the story of the ,assembly of the ,straw ,huts is told from the ,franciscan side4 ,but the alleged meeting is worth mentioning1 precisely because it was immediately before ,st4 ,francis set forth on his bloodless crusade that he is said to have met ,st4 ,dominic1 who has been so much criticised for lending himself to a more bloody one4 ,there is no space in this little book to explain how ,st4 ,francis1 as much as ,st4 ,dominic1 would ultimately have defended the defence of ,christian unity by arms4 ,indeed it would need a large book instead of a little book to develop that point alone from its first principles4 ,for the modern mind is merely a blank about the philosophy of toleration2 and the average agnostic of recent times has really had no notion of what he meant by religious liberty and equality4 ,he took his own ethics as self-evident and enforced them2 such as decency or the error of the ,adamite heresy4 ,then he was horribly shocked if he heard of anybody else1 ,moslem or ,christian1 taking his ethics as self-evident and enforcing them2 such as reverence or the error of the ,atheist heresy4 ,and then he wound up by taking all this lop-sided illogical deadlock1 of the unconscious meeting the unfamiliar1 and called it the liberality of his own mind4 ,medieval men thought that if a social system was founded on a certain idea it must fight for that idea1 whether it was as simple as ,islam or as carefully balanced as ,catholicism4 ,modern men really think the same thing1 as is clear when communists attack their ideas of property4 ,only they do not think it so clearly1 because they have not really thought out their idea of property4 ,but while it is probable that ,st4 ,francis would have reluctantly agreed with ,st4 ,dominic that war for the truth was right in the last resort1 it is certain that ,st4 ,dominic did enthusiastically agree with ,st4 ,francis that it was far better to prevail by persuasion and enlightenment if it were possible4 ,st4 ,dominic devoted himself much more to persuading than to persecuting2 but there was a difference in the methods simply because there was a difference in the men4 ,about everything ,st4 ,francis did there was something that was in a good sense childish1 and even in a good sense wilful4 ,he threw himself into things abruptly1 as if they had just occurred to him4 ,he made a dash for his ,mediterranean enterprise with something of the air of a schoolboy running away to sea4 ,in the first act of that attempt he characteristically distinguished himself by becoming the ,patron ,saint of ,stowaways4 ,he never thought of waiting for introductions or bargains or any of the considerable backing that he already had from rich and responsible people4 ,he simply saw a boat and threw himself into it1 as he threw himself into everything else4 ,it has all that air of running a race which makes his whole life read like an escapade or even literally an escape4 ,he lay like lumber among the cargo1 with one companion whom he had swept with him in his rush2 but the voyage was apparently unfortunate and erratic and ended in an enforced return to ,italy4 ,apparently it was after this first false start that the great re-union took place at the ,portiuncula1 and between this and the final ,syrian journey there was also an attempt to meet the ,moslem menace by preaching to the ,moors in ,spain4 ,in ,spain indeed several of the first ,franciscans had already succeeded gloriously in being martyred4 ,but the great ,francis still went about stretching out his arms for such torments and desiring that agony in vain4 ,no one would have said more readily than he that he was probably less like ,christ than those others who had already found their ,calvary2 but the thing remained with him like a secret2 the strangest of the sorrows of man4 ,his later voyage was more successful1 so far as arriving at the scene of operations was concerned4 ,he arrived at the headquarters of the ,crusade which was in front of the besieged city of ,damietta1 and went on in his rapid and solitary fashion to seek the headquarters of the ,saracens4 ,he succeeded in obtaining an interview with the ,sultan2 and it was at that interview that he evidently offered1 and as some say proceeded1 to fling himself into the fire as a divine ordeal1 defying the ,moslem religious teachers to do the same4 ,it is quite certain that he would have done so at a moment's notice4 ,indeed throwing himself into the fire was hardly more desperate1 in any case1 than throwing himself among the weapons and tools of torture of a horde of fanatical ,mahomedans and asking them to renounce ,mahomet4 ,it is said further that the ,mahomedan muftis showed some coldness towards the proposed competition1 and that one of them quietly withdrew while it was under discussion2 which would also appear credible4 ,but for whatever reason ,francis evidently returned as freely as he came4 ,there may be something in the story of the individual impression produced on the ,sultan1 which the narrator represents as a sort of secret conversion4 ,there may be something in the suggestion that the holy man was unconsciously protected among half-barbarous orientals by the halo of sanctity that is supposed in such places to surround an idiot4 ,there is probably as much or more in the more generous explanation of that graceful though capricious courtesy and compassion which mingled with wilder things in the stately ,soldans of the type and tradition of ,saladin4 ,finally1 there is perhaps something in the suggestion that the tale of ,st4 ,francis might be told as a sort of ironic tragedy and comedy called ,the ,man ,who ,could ,not ,get ,killed4 ,men liked him too much for himself to let him die for his faith2 and the man was received instead of the message4 ,but all these are only converging guesses at a great effort that is hard to judge1 because it broke off short like the beginnings of a great bridge that might have united ,east and ,west1 and remains one of the great might-have-beens of history4 ,meanwhile the great movement in ,italy was making giant strides4 ,backed now by papal authority as well as popular enthusiasm1 and creating a kind of comradeship among all classes1 it had started a riot of reconstruction on all sides of religious and social life2 and especially began to express itself in that enthusiasm for building which is the mark of all the resurrections of ,western ,europe4 ,there had notably been established at ,bologna a magnificent mission house of the ,friars ,minor2 and a vast body of them and their sympathisers surrounded it with a chorus of acclamation4 ,their unanimity had a strange interruption4 ,one man alone in that crowd was seen to turn and suddenly denounce the building as if it had been a ,babylonian temple2 demanding indignantly since when the ,lady ,poverty had thus been insulted with the luxury of palaces4 ,it was ,francis1 a wild figure1 returned from his ,eastern ,crusade2 and it was the first and last time that he spoke in wrath to his children4 ,a word must be said later about this serious division of sentiment and policy1 about which many ,franciscans1 and to some extent ,francis himself1 parted company with the more moderate policy which ultimately prevailed4 ,at this point we need only note it as another shadow fallen upon his spirit after his disappointment in the desert2 and as in some sense the prelude to the next phase of his career1 which is the most isolated and the most mysterious4 ,it is true that everything about this episode seems to be covered with some cloud of dispute1 even including its date2 some writers putting it much earlier in the narrative than this4 ,but whether or no it was chronologically it was certainly logically the culmination of the story1 and may best be indicated here4 ,i say indicated for it must be a matter of little more than indication2 the thing being a mystery both in the higher moral and the more trivial historical sense4 ,anyhow the conditions of the affair seem to have been these4 ,francis and a young companion1 in the course of their common wandering1 came past a great castle all lighted up with the festivities attending a son of the house receiving the honour of knighthood4 ,this aristocratic mansion1 which took its name from ,monte ,feltro1 they entered in their beautiful and casual fashion and began to give their own sort of good news4 ,there were some at least who listened to the saint as if he had been an angel of ,god2 among them a gentleman named ,orlando of ,chiusi1 who had great lands in ,tuscany1 and who proceeded to do ,st4 ,francis a singular and somewhat picturesque act of courtesy4 ,he gave him a mountain2 a thing somewhat unique among the gifts of the world4 ,presumably the ,franciscan rule which forbade a man to accept money had made no detailed provision about accepting mountains4 ,nor indeed did ,st4 ,francis accept it save as he accepted everything1 as a temporary convenience rather than a personal possession2 but he turned it into a sort of refuge for the eremitical rather than the monastic life2 he retired there when he wished for a life of prayer and fasting which he did not ask even his closest friends to follow4 ,this was ,alverno of the ,apennines1 and upon its peak there rests for ever a dark cloud that has a rim or halo of glory4 ,what it was exactly that happened there may never be known4 ,the matter has been1 ,i believe1 a subject of dispute among the most devout students of the saintly life as well as between such students and others of the more secular sort4 ,it may be that ,st4 ,francis never spoke to a soul on the subject2 it would be highly characteristic1 and it is certain in any case that he said very little2 ,i think he is only alleged to have spoken of it to one man4 ,subject however to such truly sacred doubts1 ,i will confess that to me personally this one solitary and indirect report that has come down to us reads very like the report of something real2 of some of those things that are more real than what we call daily realities4 ,even something as it were double and bewildering about the image seems to carry the impression of an experience shaking the senses2 as does the passage in ,revelations about the supernatural creatures full of eyes4 ,it would seem that ,st4 ,francis beheld the heavens above him occupied by a vast winged being like a seraph spread out like a cross4 ,there seems some mystery about whether the winged figure was itself crucified or in the posture of crucifixion1 or whether it merely enclosed in its frame of wings some colossal crucifix4 ,but it seems clear that there was some question of the former impression2 for ,st4 ,bonaventura distinctly says that ,st4 ,francis doubted how a seraph could be crucified1 since those awful and ancient principalities were without the infirmity of the ,passion4 ,st4 ,bonaventura suggests that the seeming contradiction may have meant that ,st4 ,francis was to be crucified as a spirit since he could not be crucified as a man2 but whatever the meaning of the vision1 the general idea of it is very vivid and overwhelming4 ,st4 ,francis saw above him1 filling the whole heavens1 some vast immemorial unthinkable power1 ancient like the ,ancient of ,days1 whose calm men had conceived under the forms of winged bulls or monstrous cherubim1 and all that winged wonder was in pain like a wounded bird4 ,this seraphic suffering1 it is said1 pierced his soul with a sword of grief and pity2 it may be inferred that some sort of mounting agony accompanied the ecstasy4 ,finally after some fashion the apocalypse faded from the sky and the agony within subsided2 and silence and the natural air filled the morning twilight and settled slowly in the purple chasms and cleft abysses of the ,apennines4 ,the head of the solitary sank1 amid all that relaxation and quiet in which time can drift by with the sense of something ended and complete2 and as he stared downwards1 he saw the marks of nails in his own hands4 ,chapter ,,ix ,miracles and ,death ,the tremendous story of the ,stigmata of ,st4 ,francis1 which was the end of the last chapter1 was in some sense the end of his life4 ,in a logical sense1 it would have been the end even if it had happened at the beginning4 ,but truer traditions refer it to a later date and suggest that his remaining days on the earth had something about them of the fingering of a shadow4 ,whether ,st4 ,bonaventura was right in his hint that ,st4 ,francis saw in that seraphic vision something almost like a vast mirror of his own soul1 that could at least suffer like an angel though not like a god1 or whether it expressed under an imagery more primitive and colossal than common ,christian art the primary paradox of the death of ,god1 it is evident from its traditional consequences that it was meant for a crown and for a seal4 ,it seems to have been after seeing this vision that he began to go blind4 ,but the incident has another and much less important place in this rough and limited outline4 ,it is the natural occasion for considering briefly and collectively all the facts or fables of another aspect of the life of ,st4 ,francis2 an aspect which is1 ,i will not say more disputable1 but certainly more disputed4 ,i mean all that mass of testimony and tradition that concerns his miraculous powers and supernatural experiences1 with which it would have been easy to stud and bejewel every page of the story2 only that certain circumstances necessary to the conditions of this narration make it better to gather1 somewhat hastily1 all such jewels into a heap4 ,i have here adopted this course in order to make allowance for a prejudice4 ,it is indeed to a great extent a prejudice of the past2 a prejudice that is plainly disappearing in days of greater enlightenment1 and especially of a greater range of scientific experiment and knowledge4 ,but it is a prejudice that is still tenacious in many of an older generation and still traditional in many of the younger4 ,i mean1 of course1 what used to be called the belief that miracles do not happen1 as ,i think ,matthew ,arnold expressed it1 in expressing the standpoint of so many of our ,victorian uncles and great-uncles4 ,in other words it was the remains of that sceptical simplification by which some of the philosophers of the early eighteenth century had popularised the impression 7for a very short time7 that we had discovered the regulations of the cosmos like the works of a clock1 of so very simple a clock that it was possible to distinguish almost at a glance what could or could not have happened in human experience4 ,it should be remembered that these real sceptics1 of the golden age of scepticism1 were quite as scornful of the first fancies of science as of the lingering legends of religion4 ,voltaire1 when he was told that a fossil fish had been found on the peaks of the ,alps1 laughed openly at the tale and said that some fasting monk or hermit had dropped his fish-bones there2 possibly in order to effect another monkish fraud4 ,everybody knows by this time that science has had its revenge on scepticism4 ,the border between the credible and the incredible has not only become once more as vague as in any barbaric twilight2 but the credible is obviously increasing and the incredible shrinking4 ,a man in ,voltaire's time did not know what miracle he would next have to throw up4 ,a man in our time does not know what miracle he will next have to swallow4 ,but long before these things had happened1 in those days of my boyhood when ,i first saw the figure of ,st4 ,francis far away in the distance and drawing me even at that distance1 in those ,victorian days which did seriously separate the virtues from the miracles of the saints--even in those days ,i could not help feeling vaguely puzzled about how this method could be applied to history4 ,even then ,i did not quite understand1 and even now ,i do not quite understand1 on what principle one is to pick and choose in the chronicles of the past which seem to be all of a piece4 ,all our knowledge of certain historical periods1 and notably of the whole medieval period1 rests on certain connected chronicles written by people who are some of them nameless and all of them dead1 who cannot in any case be cross-examined and cannot in some cases be corroborated4 ,i have never been quite clear about the nature of the right by which historians accepted masses of detail from them as definitely true1 and suddenly denied their truthfulness when one detail was preternatural4 ,i do not complain of their being sceptics2 ,i am puzzled about why the sceptics are not more sceptical4 ,i can understand their saying that these details would never have been included in a chronicle except by lunatics or liars2 but in that case the only inference is that the chronicle was written by liars or lunatics4 ,they will write for instance3 ,monkish fanaticism found it easy to spread the report that miracles were already being worked at the tomb of ,thomas ,becket4 ,why should they not say equally well1 ,monkish fanaticism found it easy to spread the slander that four knights from ,king ,henry's court had assassinated ,thomas ,becket in the cathedral8 ,they would write something like this3 ,the credulity of the age readily believed that ,joan of ,arc had been inspired to point out the ,dauphin although he was in disguise4 ,why should they not write on the same principle3 ,the credulity of the age was such as to suppose that an obscure peasant girl could get an audience at the court of the ,dauphin8 ,and so1 in the present case1 when they tell us there is a wild story that ,st4 ,francis flung himself into the fire and emerged scathless1 upon what precise principle are they forbidden to tell us of a wild story that ,st4 ,francis flung himself into the camp of the ferocious ,moslems and returned safe8 ,i only ask for information2 for ,i do not see the rationale of the thing myself4 ,i will undertake to say there was not a word written of ,st4 ,francis by any contemporary who was himself incapable of believing and telling a miraculous story4 ,perhaps it is all monkish fables and there never was any ,st4 ,francis or any ,st4 ,thomas ,becket or any ,joan of ,arc4 ,this is undoubtedly a reductio ad absurdum2 but it is a reductio ad absurdum of the view which thought all miracles absurd4 ,and in abstract logic this method of selection would lead to the wildest absurdities4 ,an intrinsically incredible story could only mean that the authority was unworthy of credit4 ,it could not mean that other parts of his story must be received with complete credulity4 ,if somebody said he had met a man in yellow trousers1 who proceeded to jump down his own throat1 we should not exactly take our ,bible oath or be burned at the stake for the statement that he wore yellow trousers4 ,if somebody claimed to have gone up in a blue balloon and found that the moon was made of green cheese1 we should not exactly take an affidavit that the balloon was blue any more than that the moon was green4 ,and the really logical conclusion from throwing doubts on all tales like the miracles of ,st4 ,francis was to throw doubts on the existence of men like ,st4 ,francis4 ,and there really was a modern moment1 a sort of high-water mark of insane scepticism1 when this sort of thing was really said or done4 ,people used to go about saying that there was no such person as ,st4 ,patrick2 which is every bit as much of a human and historical howler as saying there was no such person as ,st4 ,francis4 ,there was a time1 for instance1 when the madness of mythological explanation had dissolved a large part of solid history under the universal and luxuriant warmth and radiance of the ,sun-,myth4 ,i believe that that particular sun has already set1 but there have been any number of moons and meteors to take its place4 ,st4 ,francis1 of course1 would make a magnificent ,sun-,myth4 ,how could anybody miss the chance of being a ,sun-,myth when he is actually best known by a song called ,the ,canticle of the ,sun8 ,it is needless to point out that the fire in ,syria was the dawn in the ,east and the bleeding wounds in ,tuscany the sunset in the ,west4 ,i could expound this theory at considerable length2 only1 as so often happens to such fine theorists1 another and more promising theory occurs to me4 ,i cannot think how everybody1 including myself1 can have overlooked the fact that the whole tale of ,st4 ,francis is of ,totemistic origin4 ,it is unquestionably a tale that simply swarms with totems4 ,the ,franciscan woods are as full of them as any ,red ,indian fable4 ,francis is made to call himself an ass1 because in the original mythos ,francis was merely the name given to the real four-footed donkey1 afterwards vaguely evolved into a half-human god or hero4 ,and that1 no doubt1 is why ,i used to feel that the ,brother ,wolf and ,sister ,bird of ,st4 ,francis were somehow like the ,brer ,fox and ,sis ,cow of ,uncle ,remus4 ,some say there is an innocent stage of infancy in which we do really believe that a cow talked or a fox made a tar baby4 ,anyhow there is an innocent period of intellectual growth in which we do sometimes really believe that ,st4 ,patrick was a ,sun-,myth or ,st4 ,francis a ,totem4 ,but for the most of us both those phases of paradise are past4 ,as ,i shall suggest in a moment1 there is one sense in which we can for practical purposes distinguish between probable and improbable things in such a story4 ,it is not so much a question of cosmic criticism about the nature of the event as of literary criticism about the nature of the story4 ,some stories are told much more seriously than others4 ,but apart from this1 ,i shall not attempt here any definite differentiation between them4 ,i shall not do so for a practical reason affecting the utility of the proceeding2 ,i mean the fact that in a practical sense the whole of this matter is again in the melting pot1 from which many things may emerge moulded into what rationalism would have called monsters4 ,the fixed points of faith and philosophy do indeed remain always the same4 ,whether a man believes that fire in one case could fail to burn1 depends on why he thinks it generally does burn4 ,if it burns nine sticks out of ten because it is its nature or doom to do so1 then it will burn the tenth stick as well4 ,if it burns nine sticks because it is the will of ,god that it should1 then it might be the will of ,god that the tenth should be unburned4 ,nobody can get behind that fundamental difference about the reason of things2 and it is as rational for a theist to believe in miracles as for an atheist to disbelieve in them4 ,in other words there is only one intelligent reason why a man does not believe in miracles and that is that he does believe in materialism4 ,but these fixed points of faith and philosophy are things for a theoretical work and have no particular place here4 ,and in the matter of history and biography1 which have their place here1 nothing is fixed at all4 ,the world is in a welter of the possible and impossible1 and nobody knows what will be the next scientific hypothesis to support some ancient superstition4 ,three quarters of the miracles attributed to ,st4 ,francis would already be explained by psychologists1 not indeed as a ,catholic explains them1 but as a materialist must necessarily refuse to explain them4 ,there is one whole department of the miracles of ,st4 ,francis2 the miracles of healing4 ,what is the good of a superior sceptic throwing them away as unthinkable1 at the moment when faith-healing is already a big booming ,yankee business like ,barnum's ,show8 ,there is another whole department analogous to the tales of ,christ perceiving men's thoughts4 ,what is the use of censoring them and blacking them out because they are marked miracles1 when thought-reading is already a parlour game like musical chairs8 ,there is another whole department1 to be studied separately if such scientific study were possible1 of the well-attested wonders worked from his relics and fragmentary possessions4 ,what is the use of dismissing all that as inconceivable1 when even these common psychical parlour tricks turn perpetually upon touching some familiar object or holding in the hand some personal possession8 ,i do not believe1 of course1 that these tricks are of the same type as the good works of the saint2 save perhaps in the sense of ,diabolus simius ,dei4 ,but it is not a question of what ,i believe and why1 but of what the sceptic disbelieves and why4 ,and the moral for the practical biographer and historian is that he must wait till things settle down a little more1 before he claims to disbelieve anything4 ,this being so he can choose between two courses2 and not without some hesitation1 ,i have here chosen between them4 ,the best and boldest course would be to tell the whole story in a straightforward way1 miracles and all1 as the original historians told it4 ,and to this sane and simple course the new historians will probably have to return4 ,but it must be remembered that this book is avowedly only an introduction to ,st4 ,francis or the study of ,st4 ,francis4 ,those who need an introduction are in their nature strangers4 ,with them the object is to get them to listen to ,st4 ,francis at all2 and in doing so it is perfectly legitimate so to arrange the order of the facts that the familiar come before the unfamiliar and those they can at once understand before those they have a difficulty in understanding4 ,i should only be too thankful if this thin and scratchy sketch contains a line or two that attracts men to study ,st4 ,francis for themselves2 and if they do study him for themselves1 they will soon find that the supernatural part of the story seems quite as natural as the rest4 ,but it was necessary that my outline should be a merely human one1 since ,i was only presenting his claim on all humanity1 including sceptical humanity4 ,i therefore adopted the alternative course1 of showing first that nobody but a born fool could fail to realise that ,francis of ,assisi was a very real historical human being2 and then summarising briefly in this chapter the superhuman powers that were certainly a part of that history and humanity4 ,it only remains to say a few words about some distinctions that may reasonably be observed in the matter by any man of any views2 that he may not confuse the point and climax of the saint's life with the fancies or rumours that were really only the fringes of his reputation4 ,there is so immense a mass of legends and anecdotes about ,st4 ,francis of ,assisi1 and there are so many admirable compilations that cover nearly all of them1 that ,i have been compelled within these narrow limits to pursue a somewhat narrow policy2 that of following one line of explanation and only mentioning one anecdote here or there because it illustrates that explanation4 ,if this is true about all the legends and stories1 it is especially true about the miraculous legends and the supernatural stories4 ,if we were to take some stories as they stand1 we should receive a rather bewildered impression that the biography contains more supernatural events than natural ones4 ,now it is clean against ,catholic tradition1 co-incident in so many points with common sense1 to suppose that this is really the proportion of these things in practical human life4 ,moreover1 even considered as supernatural or preternatural stories1 they obviously fall into certain different classes1 not so much by our experience of miracles as by our experience of stories4 ,some of them have the character of fairy stories1 in their form even more than their incident4 ,they are obviously tales told by the fire to peasants or the children of peasants1 under conditions in which nobody thinks he is propounding a religious doctrine to be received or rejected1 but only rounding off a story in the most symmetrical way1 according to that sort of decorative scheme or pattern that runs through all fairy stories4 ,others are obviously in their form most emphatically evidence2 that is they are testimony that is truth or lies2 and it will be very hard for any judge of human nature to think they are lies4 ,it is admitted that the story of the ,stigmata is not a legend but can only be a lie4 ,i mean that it is certainly not a late legendary accretion added afterwards to the fame of ,st4 ,francis2 but is something that started almost immediately with his earliest biographers4 ,it is practically necessary to suggest that it was a conspiracy2 indeed there has been some disposition to put the fraud upon the unfortunate ,elias1 whom so many parties have been disposed to treat as a useful universal villain4 ,it has been said1 indeed1 that these early biographers1 ,st4 ,bonaventura and ,celano and the ,three ,companions1 though they declare that ,st4 ,francis received the mystical wounds1 do not say that they themselves saw those wounds4 ,i do not think this argument conclusive2 because it only arises out of the very nature of the narrative4 ,the ,three ,companions are not in any case making an affidavit2 and therefore none of the admitted parts of their story are in the form of an affidavit4 ,they are writing a chronicle of a comparatively impersonal and very objective description4 ,they do not say1 ,i saw ,st4 ,francis's wounds2 they say1 ,st4 ,francis received wounds4 ,but neither do they say1 ,i saw ,st4 ,francis go into the ,portiuncula2 they say1 ,st4 ,francis went into the ,portiuncula4 ,but ,i still cannot understand why they should be trusted as eye-witnesses about the one fact and not trusted as eye-witnesses about the other4 ,it is all of a piece2 it would be a most abrupt and abnormal interruption in their way of telling the story if they suddenly began to curse and to swear1 and give their names and addresses1 and take their oath that they themselves saw and verified the physical facts in question4 ,it seems to me1 therefore1 that this particular discussion goes back to the general question ,i have already mentioned2 the question of why these chronicles should be credited at all1 if they are credited with abounding in the incredible4 ,but that again will probably be found to revert1 in the last resort1 to the mere fact that some men cannot believe in miracles because they are materialists4 ,that is logical enough2 but they are bound to deny the preternatural as much in the testimony of a modern scientific professor as in that of a medieval monkish chronicler4 ,and there are plenty of professors for them to contradict by this time4 ,but whatever may be thought of such supernaturalism in the comparatively material and popular sense of supernatural acts1 we shall miss the whole point of ,st4 ,francis1 especially of ,st4 ,francis after ,alverno1 if we do not realise that he was living a supernatural life4 ,and there is more and more of such supernaturalism in his life as he approaches towards his death4 ,this element of the supernatural did not separate him from the natural2 for it was the whole point of his position that it united him more perfectly to the natural4 ,it did not make him dismal or dehumanised2 for it was the whole meaning of his message that such mysticism makes a man cheerful and humane4 ,but it was the whole point of his position1 and it was the whole meaning of his message1 that the power that did it was a supernatural power4 ,if this simple distinction were not apparent from the whole of his life1 it would be difficult for anyone to miss it in reading the account of his death4 ,in a sense he may be said to have wandered as a dying man1 just as he had wandered as a living one4 ,as it became more and more apparent that his health was failing1 he seems to have been carried from place to place like a pageant of sickness or almost like a pageant of mortality4 ,he went to ,rieti1 to ,nursia1 perhaps to ,naples1 certainly to ,cortona by the lake of ,perugia4 ,but there is something profoundly pathetic1 and full of great problems1 in the fact that at last1 as it would seem1 his flame of life leapt up and his heart rejoiced when they saw afar off on the ,assisian hill the solemn pillars of the ,portiuncula4 ,he who had become a vagabond for the sake of a vision1 he who had denied himself all sense of place and possession1 he whose whole gospel and glory it was to be homeless1 received like a ,parthian shot from nature1 the sting of the sense of home4 ,he also had his maladie du clocher1 his sickness of the spire2 though his spire was higher than ours4 ,never1 he cried with the sudden energy of strong spirits in death1 never give up this place4 ,if you would go anywhere or make any pilgrimage1 return always to your home2 for this is the holy house of ,god4 ,and the procession passed under the arches of his home2 and he laid down on his bed and his brethren gathered round him for the last long vigil4 ,it seems to me no moment for entering into the subsequent disputes about which successors he blessed or in what form and with what significance4 ,in that one mighty moment he blessed us all4 ,after he had taken farewell of some of his nearest and especially some of his oldest friends1 he was lifted at his own request off his own rude bed and laid on the bare ground2 as some say clad only in a hair-shirt1 as he had first gone forth into the wintry woods from the presence of his father4 ,it was the final assertion of his great fixed idea2 of praise and thanks springing to their most towering height out of nakedness and nothing4 ,as he lay there we may be certain that his seared and blinded eyes saw nothing but their object and their origin4 ,we may be sure that the soul1 in its last inconceivable isolation1 was face to face with nothing less than ,god ,incarnate and ,christ ,crucified4 ,but for the men standing around him there must have been other thoughts mingling with these2 and many memories must have gathered like ghosts in the twilight1 as that day wore on and that great darkness descended in which we all lost a friend4 ,for what lay dying there was not ,dominic of the ,dogs of ,god1 a leader in logical and controversial wars that could be reduced to a plan and handed on like a plan2 a master of a machine of democratic discipline by which others could organise themselves4 ,what was passing from the world was a person2 a poet2 an outlook on life like a light that was never after on sea or land2 a thing not to be replaced or repeated while the earth endures4 ,it has been said that there was only one ,christian1 who died on the cross2 it is truer to say in this sense that there was only one ,franciscan1 whose name was ,francis4 ,huge and happy as was the popular work he left behind him1 there was something that he could not leave behind1 any more than a landscape painter can leave his eyes in his will4 ,it was an artist in life who was here called to be an artist in death2 and he had a better right than ,nero1 his anti-type1 to say ,qualis artifex pereo4 ,for ,nero's life was full of posing for the occasion like that of an actor2 while the ,umbrian's had a natural and continuous grace like that of an athlete4 ,but ,st4 ,francis had better things to say and better things to think about1 and his thoughts were caught upwards where we cannot follow them1 in divine and dizzy heights to which death alone can lift us up4 ,round about him stood the brethren in their brown habits1 those that had loved him even if they afterwards disputed with each other4 ,there was ,bernard his first friend and ,angelo who had served as his secretary and ,elias his successor1 whom tradition tried to turn into a sort of ,judas1 but who seems to have been little worse than an official in the wrong place4 ,his tragedy was that he had a ,franciscan habit without a ,franciscan heart1 or at any rate with a very un-,franciscan head4 ,but though he made a bad ,franciscan1 he might have made a decent ,dominican4 ,anyhow1 there is no reason to doubt that he loved ,francis1 for ruffians and savages did that4 ,anyhow he stood among the rest as the hours passed and the shadows lengthened in the house of the ,portiuncula2 and nobody need think so ill of him as to suppose that his thoughts were then in the tumultuous future1 in the ambitions and controversies of his later years4 ,a man might fancy that the birds must have known when it happened2 and made some motion in the evening sky4 ,as they had once1 according to the tale1 scattered to the four winds of heaven in the pattern of a cross at his signal of dispersion1 they might now have written in such dotted lines a more awful augury across the sky4 ,hidden in the woods perhaps were little cowering creatures never again to be so much noticed and understood2 and it has been said that animals are sometimes conscious of things to which man their spiritual superior is for the moment blind4 ,we do not know whether any shiver passed through all the thieves and the outcasts and the outlaws1 to tell them what had happened to him who never knew the nature of scorn4 ,but at least in the passages and porches of the ,portiuncula there was a sudden stillness1 where all the brown figures stood like bronze statues2 for the stopping of the great heart that had not broken till it held the world4 ,chapter ,x ,the ,testament of ,st4 ,francis ,in one sense doubtless it is a sad irony that ,st4 ,francis1 who all his life had desired all men to agree1 should have died amid increasing disagreements4 ,but we must not exaggerate this discord1 as some have done1 so as to turn it into a mere defeat of all his ideals4 ,there are some who represent his work as having been merely ruined by the wickedness of the world1 or what they always assume to be the even greater wickedness of the ,church4 ,this little book is an essay on ,st4 ,francis and not on the ,franciscan ,order1 still less on the ,catholic ,church or the ,papacy or the policy pursued towards the extreme ,franciscans or the ,fraticelli4 ,it is therefore only necessary to note in a very few words what was the general nature of the controversy that raged after the great saint's death1 and to some extent troubled the last days of his life4 ,the dominant detail was the interpretation of the vow of poverty1 or the refusal of all possessions4 ,nobody so far as ,i know ever proposed to interfere with the vow of the individual friar that he would have no individual possessions4 ,nobody1 that is1 proposed to interfere with his negation of private property4 ,but some ,franciscans1 invoking the authority of ,francis on their side1 went further than this and further ,i think than anybody else has ever gone4 ,they proposed to abolish not only private property but property4 ,that is1 they refused to be corporately responsible for anything at all2 for any buildings or stores or tools2 they refused to own them collectively even when they used them collectively4 ,it is perfectly true that many1 especially among the first supporters of this view1 were men of a splendid and selfless spirit1 wholly devoted to the great saint's ideal4 ,it is also perfectly true that the ,pope and the authorities of the ,church did not think this conception was a workable arrangement1 and went so far in modifying it as to set aside certain clauses in the great saint's will4 ,but it is not at all easy to see that it was a workable arrangement or even an arrangement at all2 for it was really a refusal to arrange anything4 ,everybody knew of course that ,franciscans were communists2 but this was not so much being a communist as being an anarchist4 ,surely upon any argument somebody or something must be answerable for what happened to or in or concerning a number of historic edifices and ordinary goods and chattels4 ,many idealists of a socialistic sort1 notably of the school of ,mr4 ,shaw or ,mr4 ,wells1 have treated this dispute as if it were merely a case of the tyranny of wealthy and wicked pontiffs crushing the true ,christianity of ,christian ,socialists4 ,but in truth this extreme ideal was in a sense the very reverse of ,socialist1 or even social4 ,precisely the thing which these enthusiasts refused was that social ownership on which ,socialism is built2 what they primarily refused to do was what ,socialists primarily exist to do2 to own legally in their corporate capacity4 ,nor is it true that the tone of the ,popes towards the enthusiasts was merely harsh and hostile4 ,the ,pope maintained for a long time a compromise which he had specially designed to meet their own conscientious objections2 a compromise by which the ,papacy itself held the property in a kind of trust for the owners who refused to touch it4 ,the truth is that this incident shows two things which are common enough in ,catholic history1 but very little understood by the journalistic history of industrial civilisation4 ,it shows that the ,saints were sometimes great men when the ,popes were small men4 ,but it also shows that great men are sometimes wrong when small men are right4 ,and it will be found1 after all1 very difficult for any candid and clear-headed outsider to deny that the ,pope was right1 when he insisted that the world was not made only for ,franciscans4 ,for that was what was behind the quarrel4 ,at the back of this particular practical question there was something much larger and more momentous1 the stir and wind of which we can feel as we read the controversy4 ,we might go so far as to put the ultimate truth thus4 ,st4 ,francis was so great and original a man that he had something in him of what makes the founder of a religion4 ,many of his followers were more or less ready1 in their hearts1 to treat him as the founder of a religion4 ,they were willing to let the ,franciscan spirit escape from ,christendom as the ,christian spirit had escaped from ,israel4 ,they were willing to let it eclipse ,christendom as the ,christian spirit had eclipsed ,israel4 ,francis1 the fire that ran through the roads of ,italy1 was to be the beginning of a conflagration in which the old ,christian civilisation was to be consumed4 ,that was the point the ,pope had to settle2 whether ,christendom should absorb ,francis or ,francis ,christendom4 ,and he decided rightly1 apart from the duties of his place2 for the ,church could include all that was good in the ,franciscans and the ,franciscans could not include all that was good in the ,church4 ,there is one consideration which1 though sufficiently clear in the whole story1 has not perhaps been sufficiently noted1 especially by those who cannot see the case for a certain ,catholic common sense larger even than ,franciscan enthusiasm4 ,yet it arises out of the very merits of the man whom they so rightly admire4 ,francis of ,assisi1 as has been said again and again1 was a poet2 that is1 he was a person who could express his personality4 ,now it is everywhere the mark of this sort of man that his very limitations make him larger4 ,he is what he is1 not only by what he has1 but in some degree by what he has not4 ,but the limits that make the lines of such a personal portrait cannot be made the limits of all humanity4 ,st4 ,francis is a very strong example of this quality in the man of genius1 that in him even what is negative is positive1 because it is part of a character4 ,an excellent example of what ,i mean may be found in his attitude towards learning and scholarship4 ,he ignored and in some degree discouraged books and book-learning2 and from his own point of view and that of his own work in the world he was absolutely right4 ,the whole point of his message was to be so simple that the village idiot could understand it4 ,the whole point of his point of view was that it looked out freshly upon a fresh world1 that might have been made that morning4 ,save for the great primal things1 the ,creation and the ,story of ,eden1 the first ,christmas and the first ,easter1 the world had no history4 ,but is it desired or desirable that the whole ,catholic ,church should have no history8 ,it is perhaps the chief suggestion of this book that ,st4 ,francis walked the world like the ,pardon of ,god4 ,i mean that his appearance marked the moment when men could be reconciled not only to ,god but to nature and1 most difficult of all1 to themselves4 ,for it marked the moment when all the stale paganism that had poisoned the ancient world was at last worked out of the social system4 ,he opened the gates of the ,dark ,ages as of a prison of purgatory1 where men had cleansed themselves as hermits in the desert or heroes in the barbarian wars4 ,it was in fact his whole function to tell men to start afresh and1 in that sense1 to tell them to forget4 ,if they were to turn over a new leaf and begin a fresh page with the first large letters of the alphabet1 simply drawn and brilliantly coloured in the early medieval manner1 it was clearly a part of that particular childlike cheerfulness that they should paste down the old page that was all black and bloody with horrid things4 ,for instance1 ,i have already noted that there is not a trace in the poetry of this first ,italian poet of all that pagan mythology which lingered long after paganism4 ,the first ,italian poet seems the only man in the world who has never even heard of ,virgil4 ,this was exactly right for the special sense in which he is the first ,italian poet4 ,it is quite right that he should call a nightingale a nightingale1 and not have its song spoilt or saddened by the terrible tales of ,itylus or ,procne4 ,in short1 it is really quite right and quite desirable that ,st4 ,francis should never have heard of ,virgil4 ,but do we really desire that ,dante should never have heard of ,virgil8 ,do we really desire that ,dante should never have read any pagan mythology8 ,it has been truly said that the use that ,dante makes of such fables is altogether part of a deeper orthodoxy2 that his huge heathen fragments1 his gigantic figures of ,minos or of ,charon1 only give a hint of some enormous natural religion behind all history and from the first foreshadowing the ,faith4 ,it is well to have the ,sybil as well as ,david in the ,dies ,irae4 ,that ,st4 ,francis would have burned all the leaves of all the books of the ,sybil1 in exchange for one fresh leaf from the nearest tree1 is perfectly true2 and perfectly proper to ,st4 ,francis4 ,but it is good to have the ,dies ,irae as well as the ,canticle of the ,sun4 ,by this thesis1 in short1 the coming of ,st4 ,francis was like the birth of a child in a dark house1 lifting its doom2 a child that grows up unconscious of the tragedy and triumphs over it by his innocence4 ,in him it is necessarily not only innocence but ignorance4 ,it is the essence of the story that he should pluck at the green grass without knowing it grows over a murdered man or climb the apple-tree without knowing it was the gibbet of a suicide4 ,it was such an amnesty and reconciliation that the freshness of the ,franciscan spirit brought to all the world4 ,but it does not follow that it ought to impose its ignorance on all the world4 ,and ,i think it would have tried to impose it on all the world4 ,for some ,franciscans it would have seemed right that ,franciscan poetry should expel ,benedictine prose4 ,for the symbolic child it was quite rational4 ,it was right enough that for such a child the world should be a large new nursery with blank white-washed walls1 on which he could draw his own pictures in chalk in the childish fashion1 crude in outline and gay in colour2 the beginnings of all our art4 ,it was right enough that to him such a nursery should seem the most magnificent mansion of the imagination of man4 ,but in the ,church of ,god are many mansions4 ,every heresy has been an effort to narrow the ,church4 ,if the ,franciscan movement had turned into a new religion1 it would after all have been a narrow religion4 ,in so far as it did turn here and there into a heresy1 it was a narrow heresy4 ,it did what heresy always does2 it set the mood against the mind4 ,the mood was indeed originally the good and glorious mood of the great ,st4 ,francis1 but it was not the whole mind of ,god or even of man4 ,and it is a fact that the mood itself degenerated1 as the mood turned into a monomania4 ,a sect that came to be called the ,fraticelli declared themselves the true sons of ,st4 ,francis and broke away from the compromises of ,rome in favour of what they would have called the complete programme of ,assisi4 ,in a very little while these loose ,franciscans began to look as ferocious as ,flagellants4 ,they launched new and violent vetoes2 they denounced marriage2 that is1 they denounced mankind4 ,in the name of the most human of saints they declared war upon humanity4 ,they did not perish particularly through being persecuted2 many of them were eventually persuaded2 and the unpersuadable rump of them that remained remained without producing anything in the least calculated to remind anybody of the real ,st4 ,francis4 ,what was the matter with these people was that they were mystics2 mystics and nothing else but mystics2 mystics and not ,catholics2 mystics and not ,christians2 mystics and not men4 ,they rotted away because1 in the most exact sense1 they would not listen to reason4 ,and ,st4 ,francis1 however wild and romantic his gyrations might appear to many1 always hung on to reason by one invisible and indestructible hair4 ,the great saint was sane2 and with the very sound of the word sanity1 as at a deeper chord struck upon a harp1 we come back to something that was indeed deeper than everything about him that seemed an almost elvish eccentricity4 ,he was not a mere eccentric because he was always turning towards the centre and heart of the maze2 he took the queerest and most zigzag short cuts through the wood1 but he was always going home4 ,he was not only far too humble to be an heresiarch1 but he was far too human to desire to be an extremist1 in the sense of an exile at the ends of the earth4 ,the sense of humour which salts all the stories of his escapades alone prevented him from ever hardening into the solemnity of sectarian self-righteousness4 ,he was by nature ready to admit that he was wrong2 and if his followers had on some practical points to admit that he was wrong1 they only admitted that he was wrong in order to prove that he was right4 ,for it is they1 his real followers1 who have really proved that he was right and even in transcending some of his negations have triumphantly extended and interpreted his truth4 ,the ,franciscan order did not fossilise or break off short like something of which the true purpose has been frustrated by official tyranny or internal treason4 ,it was this1 the central and orthodox trunk of it1 that afterwards bore fruit for the world4 ,it counted among its sons ,bonaventura the great mystic and ,bernardino the popular preacher1 who filled ,italy with the very beatific buffooneries of a ,jongleur de ,dieu4 ,it counted ,raymond ,lully with his strange learning and his large and daring plans for the conversion of the world2 a man intensely individual exactly as ,st4 ,francis was intensely individual4 ,it counted ,roger ,bacon1 the first naturalist whose experiments with light and water had all the luminous quaintness that belongs to the beginnings of natural history2 and whom even the most material scientists have hailed as a father of science4 ,it is not merely true that these were great men who did great work for the world2 it is also true that they were a certain kind of men keeping the spirit and savour of a certain kind of man1 that we can recognise in them a taste and tang of audacity and simplicity1 and know them for the sons of ,st4 ,francis4 ,for that is the full and final spirit in which we should turn to ,st4 ,francis2 in the spirit of thanks for what he has done4 ,he was above all things a great giver2 and he cared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is called thanksgiving4 ,if another great man wrote a grammar of assent1 he may well be said to have written a grammar of acceptance2 a grammar of gratitude4 ,he understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks2 and its depths are a bottomless abyss4 ,he knew that the praise of ,god stands on its strongest ground when it stands on nothing4 ,he knew that we can best measure the towering miracle of the mere fact of existence if we realise that but for some strange mercy we should not even exist4 ,and something of that larger truth is repeated in a lesser form in our own relations with so mighty a maker of history4 ,he also is a giver of things we could not have even thought of for ourselves2 he also is too great for anything but gratitude4 ,from him came a whole awakening of the world and a dawn in which all shapes and colours could be seen anew4 ,the mighty men of genius who made the ,christian civilisation that we know appear in history almost as his servants and imitators4 ,before ,dante was1 he had given poetry to ,italy2 before ,st4 ,louis ruled1 he had risen as the tribune of the poor2 and before ,giotto had painted the pictures1 he had enacted the scenes4 ,that great painter who began the whole human inspiration of ,european painting had himself gone to ,st4 ,francis to be inspired4 ,it is said that when ,st4 ,francis staged in his own simple fashion a ,nativity ,play of ,bethlehem1 with kings and angels in the stiff and gay medieval garments and the golden wigs that stood for haloes1 a miracle was wrought full of the ,franciscan glory4 ,the ,holy ,child was a wooden doll or bambino1 and it was said that he embraced it and that the image came to life in his arms4 ,he assuredly was not thinking of lesser things2 but we may at least say that one thing came to life in his arms2 and that was the thing that we call the drama4 ,save for his intense individual love of song1 he did not perhaps himself embody this spirit in any of these arts4 ,he was the spirit that was embodied4 ,he was the spiritual essence and substance that walked the world1 before anyone had seen these things in visible forms derived from it3 a wandering fire as if from nowhere1 at which men more material could light both torches and tapers4 ,he was the soul of medieval civilisation before it even found a body4 ,another and quite different stream of spiritual inspiration derives largely from him2 all that reforming energy of medieval and modern times that goes to the burden of ,deus est ,deus ,pauperum4 ,his abstract ardour for human beings was in a multitude of just medieval laws against the pride and cruelty of riches2 it is to-day behind much that is loosely called ,christian ,socialist and can more correctly be called ,catholic ,democrat4 ,neither on the artistic nor the social side would anybody pretend that these things would not have existed without him2 yet it is strictly true to say that we cannot now imagine them without him2 since he has lived and changed the world4 ,and something of that sense of impotence which was more than half his power will descend on anyone who knows what that inspiration has been in history1 and can only record it in a series of straggling and meagre sentences4 ,he will know something of what ,st4 ,francis meant by the great and good debt that cannot be paid4 ,he will feel at once the desire to have done infinitely more and the futility of having done anything4 ,he will know what it is to stand under such a deluge of a dead man's marvels1 and have nothing in return to establish against it2 to have nothing to set up under the overhanging1 overwhelming arches of such a temple of time and eternity1 but this brief candle burnt out so quickly before his shrine4 ,,hodder ,,and ,,stoughton',s ,,people',s ,,library ,,general ,,editor3 ,,sidney ,,dark #b_/f net each volume ,,st4 ,,paul',s ,,house1 ,,warwick ,,square1 ,e4,c4#d ,,st4 ,,francis ,,of ,,assisi4 ,by ,,gilbert ,k4 ,,chesterton4 ,,victorian ,,poetry4 ,by ,,john ,,drinkwater4 ,,everyday ,,biology4 ,by ,j4 ,,arthur ,,thomson4 ,,the ,,poetry ,,of ,,architecture4 ,by ,,frank ,,rutter4 ,,the ,,story ,,of ,,the ,,renaissance4 ,by ,,sidney ,,dark4 ,,atoms ,,and ,,electrons4 ,by ,j4 ,w4 ,n4 ,,sullivan4 ,,how ,,to ,,read ,,history4 ,by ,w4 ,,watkin ,,davies4 ,,our ,,debt ,,to ,,greece ,,and ,,rome4 ,by ,e4 ,b4 ,,osborn4 ,,how ,,to ,,enjoy ,,the ,,countryside4 ,by ,,marcus ,,woodward4 ,,how ,,to ,,enjoy ,,life4 ,by ,,sidney ,,dark4 ,,how ,,to ,,enjoy ,,the ,,bible4 ,by ,,canon ,,anthony ,c4 ,,deane1 ,m4,a4 ,general ,preface ,the object of ,,hodder ,,and ,,stoughton',s ,,people',s ,,library is to supply in brief form simply written introductions to the study of ,history1 ,literature1 ,biography and ,science2 in some degree to satisfy that ever-increasing demand for knowledge which is one of the happiest characteristics of our time4 ,the names of the authors of the first volumes of the ,library are sufficient evidence of the fact that each subject will be dealt with authoritatively1 while the authority will not be of the dry-as-dust order4 ,not only is it possible to have learning without tears1 but it is also possible to make the acquiring of knowledge a thrilling and entertaining adventure4 ,,hodder ,,and ,,stoughton',s ,,people',s ,,library will1 it is hoped1 supply this adventure4 ,printed in ,great ,britain4 ,r4 ,clay ,sons1 ,ltd41 ,printers1 ,bungay4