Life of St. Francis of Assisi Part 8

[2] For example, Pierre, Cardinal of St. Chryzogone and former Bishop of Meaux, who in a single election refused the dazzling offer of five hundred silver marks. Alexander III., Migne's edition, _epist._ 395.

[3] _Fasciculus rerum expetend. et fugiend._, t. ii., 7, pp.

254, 255 (Brown, 1690).

[4] John of Salisbury, _Policrat._ Migne, v. 15.

[5] Among their sources of revenue we find the right of _collagium_, by payment of which clerics acquired the right to keep a concubine. Pierre le Chantre, _Verb. abbrev._, 24.

[6] Vide _Carmina Burana_, Breslau, 8vo, 1883; Political Songs of England, published by Th. Wright, London, 8vo, 1893; _Poesies populaires latines du moyen age_, du Meril, Paris, 1847. See also Raynouard, _Lexique roman_, i., 446, 451, 464, the fine poems of the troubadour Pierre Cardinal, contemporary of St.

Francis, upon the woes of the Church, and Dante, _Inferno_, xix.

If one would gain an idea of what the bishop of a small city in those days cost his flock, he has only to read the bull of February 12, 1219, _Justis petentium_, addressed by Honorius III. to the Bishop of Terni, and including the contract by which the inhabitants of that city settled the revenues of the episcopal see. Horoy, t. iii., col. 114, or the _Bullarium romanum_, t. iii., p. 348, Turin.

[7] _Conosco sacerdoti che fanno gli usura per formare un patrimonio da lasciare ai loro spurii; altri che tengono osteria coll' insegna del collare e vendono vino_ ... Salimbene, Cantarelli, Parma, 1882, 2 vols., 8vo, ii., p. 307.

[8] Vide _Brevis historia Prior._ _Grandimont.--Stephani Tornacensis._ Epist. 115, 152, 153, 156, 162; Honorius III., Horoy's edition, lib. i., 280, 284, 286-288; ii., 12, 130, 136, 383-387.

[9] Guerard, _Cartulaire de N. D. de Paris_, t. i., p. cxi; t.

ii., p. 406. Cf. Honorius III., Bull _Inter statuta_ of July 25, 1223, Horoy, t. iv., col. 401. See also canon 23 of the Council of Beziers, 1233; Guibert de Gemblours, _epist._ 5 and 6 (Migne); Honorius III., lib. ix., 32, 81; ii., 193; iv., 10; iii., 253 and 258; iv., 33, 27, 70, 144; v., 56, 291, 420, 430; vi., 214, 132, 139, 204; vii., 127; ix., 51.

[10] Vide Bull _Postquam vocante Domino_ of July 11, 1206.

Potthast 2840.

[11] V. _Annales Stadenses_ [_Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptorum_, t. 16], _ad ann. 1237_. Among the comprehensive pictures of the situation of the Church in the thirteenth century, there is none more interesting than that left us by the Cardinal Jacques de Vitry in his _Historia occidentalis: Libri duo quorum prior Orientalis, alter Occidentalis historiae nomine inscribitur Duaci_, 1597, 16mo. pp. 259-480.

[12] V. Honorius III., Horoy's edition, lib. i., ep. 109, 125, 135, 206, 273; ii., 128, 164; iv., 120, etc.

[13] _Dialogus miraculorum_ of Cesar of Heisterbach [Strange's edition, Cologne, 1851, 2 vols., 8vo], t. ii., pp. 255 and 125.

This book, with the Golden Legend of Giacomo di Varaggio, gives the best idea of the state of religious thought in the thirteenth century.

[14] _Recueil des historiens de France._ Bouquet, t. xii., pp.

550, 551.

[15] Bonacorsi: _Vitae haereticorum_ [d'Achery, _Spicilegium_, t.

i., p. 215] Cf. Lucius III., epist. 171, Migne.

[16] Vide Bernard Gui, _Practica inquisitionis_, Douai edition, 4to, Paris, 1886 p. 244 ff., and especially the Vatican MS., 2548, folio 71.

[17] A chronicle of St. Francis's time makes this same comparison: Burchard, Abbot of Urspurg ([Cross] 1226) [_Burchardi et Cuonradi chronicon. Monum. Germ. hist. Script._, t. 23], has left us an account of the approbation of Francis by the Pope, all the more precious for being that of a contemporary. _Loc.

cit._, p. 376.

[18] _De nugis Curialium_, Dist. 1, cap. 31, p. 64, Wright's edition. Cf. _Chronique de Laon_, Bouquet xiii., p. 680.

[19] See, for example, the letter of the Italian branch of the Poor Men of Lyons [_Pauperos Lombardi_] to their brethren of Germany, there called Leonistes. In it they show the points in which they are not in harmony with the French Waldenses.

Published by Preger: _Abhandlungen der K. bayer. Akademie der Wiss. Hist. Cl._, t. xiii., 1875, p. 19 ff.

[20] These continual journeyings sometimes gained for them the name of _Pa.s.sagieni_, as in the south of France the preachers of certain sects are to-day called _Courriers_. The term, however, specially designates a Judaizing sect who returned to the literal observation of the Mosaic law: Dollinger, _Beitrage_, t.

ii., pp. 327 and 375. They should therefore be identified with the _Circonsisi_ of the const.i.tution of Frederic II.

(Huillard-Breholles, t. v., p. 280). See especially the fine monograph of M. C. Molinier: _Memoires de l'Academie de Toulouse_, 1888.

[21] A. SS., Aprilis, t. iii., p. 238d.

[22] I would say that between the inspiration of Francis and the Catharian doctrines there is an irreconcilable opposition; but it would not be difficult to find acts and words of his which recall the contempt for matter of the Cathari; for example, his way of treating his body. Some of his counsels to the friars: _Unusquisque habet in potestate sua inimic.u.m suum videlicit corpus, per quod peccat._ a.s.sisi MS. 338, folio 20b. Conform.

138, b. 2.--_c.u.m majorem inimic.u.m corpore non habeam._ 2 Cel., 3, 63. These are momentary but inevitable obscurations, moments of forgetfulness, of discouragement, when a man is not himself, and repeats mechanically what he hears said around him. The real St. Francis is, on the contrary, the lover of nature, he who sees in the whole creation the work of divine goodness, the radiance of the eternal beauty, he who, in the Canticle of the Creatures, sees in the body not the Enemy but a brother: _Caepit hilariter loqui ad corpus; Gaude, frater corpus._ 2 Cel., 3, 137.

[23] _Quodam die, dicta fabrissa dixit ipsi testi praegnanti, quod rogaret Deum, ut liberaret eam a Daemone, quem habebat in ventre ... Gulielmus dixit quod ita magnum peccatum erat jacere c.u.m uxore sua quam c.u.m concubina._ Dollinger, _loc. cit._, pp.

24, 35.

[24] Those of the _Concorrezenses_ and _Bajolenses_. In Italy _Cathari_ becomes _Gazzari_; for that matter, each country had its special appellatives; one of the most general in the north was that of the _Bulgari_, which marks the oriental origin of the sect, whence the slang term Boulgres and its derivatives (vide Matthew Paris, ann. 1238). Cf. Schmit, _Histoire des Cathares_, 8vo, 2 vols, Paris, 1849.

[25] The most current name in Italy was that of the _Patarini_, given them no doubt from their inhabiting the quarter of second-hand dealers in Milan: _la contrada dei Patari_, found in many cities. _Patari!_ is still the cry of the ragpickers in the small towns of Provence. In the thirteenth century Patarino and Catharo were synonyms. But before that the term Patarini had an entirely different sense. See the very remarkable study of M.

Felice Tocco on this subject in his _Eresia net medio evo_, 12mo, Florence, 1884.

[26] Cesar von Heisterbach, _Dial. mirac._, t. i., p. 309, Strange's edition.

[27] _Innocentii opera_, Migne, t. i., col. 537; t. ii., 654.

[28] _Computruistis in peccatis sicut jumenta in stercore suo ut fumus ac fimus putrefactionis vestrae jam fere circ.u.madjacentes regionis infecerit, ac ipsum Dominum ut credimus ad nauseam provocaverit._ _Loc. cit._, col. 654. Cf. 673; Potthast, 2532, 2539.

[29] _Gesta Innocentii_, Migne, t. i., col. clxii. Cf. _epist._ viii., 85 and 105.

[30] Campi, _Historia Ecclesiastica di Piacenza_, parte ii., p.

92 ff. Cf. _Innoc., epist._ ix., 131, 166-169; x., 54, 64, 222.

[31] A. SS., Maii, t. v., p. 87.

[32] Bull of June 6, 1205, Potthast, 2237; Migne, vii., 83. This Cardinal Leo (of the presbyterial t.i.tle of Holy Cross of Jerusalem) was one most valued by Innocent III. To him and Ugolini, the future Gregory IX., he at this epoch confided the most delicate missions (for example, in 1209, they were named legates to Otho IV.). This emba.s.sy shows in what importance the pope held the affairs of a.s.sisi, though it was a very small city.

[33] Not once do we find him fighting heretics. The early Dominicans, on the contrary, are incessantly occupied with arguing. See 2 Cel., 3, 46.

[34] It need not be said that I do not a.s.sert that no trace of it is to be found after the ministry of St. Francis, but it was no longer a force, and no longer endangered the very existence of the Church.

[35] This strange personality will charm historians and philosophers for a long while to come. I know nothing more learned or more luminous than M. Felice Tocco's fine study in his _Eresia nel medio evo_, Florence, 1884, 1 vol., 12mo, pp.

261-409.

[36] A. SS., Sept., t. vii., p. 283 ff.

[37] A. SS., Maii, vii.; Vincent de Beauvais, _Speculum historiale_, _lib._ 29, _cap._ 40. La Sila is a wooded mountain, situated eastward from Cosenza, which the peasants call _Monte Nero_. The summits are nearly 2,000 metres above the sea.

[38] Toward 1195. Gioacchino died there, March 30, 1202.

[39] A whole apochryphal literature has blossomed out around Gioacchino; certain hypercritics have tried to prove that he never wrote anything. These are exaggerations. Three large works are certainly authentic: _The Agreement of the Old and New Testaments_, _The Commentary on the Apocalypse_, and _The Psaltery of Ten Strings_, published in Venice, the first in 1517, the two others in 1527. His prophecies were so well known, even in his lifetime, that an English Cistercian, Rudolph, Abbot of Coggeshall ([Cross] 1228), coming to Rome in 1195, sought a conference with him and has left us an interesting account of it. Martene, _Amplissima Collectio_, t. v., p. 839.

[40] _Comm. in apoc._, folio 78, b. 2.

[41] _Qui vere monachus est nihil reputat esse suum nisi citharam:_ Apoc., ib., folio 183. a. 2.

[42] E. Roth, _Die Visionen der heiligen Elisabeth von Schonau_: Brunn, 1884, pp. 115-117.