Pietro had won back the money but it gave him no joy. There was nothing left for him to do but to take his pound of flesh and go. With grief and wrath he gathered up his son’s bright clothes, leaving him with not a single garment to put on, and left the hall, hearing behind him the angry murmur of the crowd. Then he went home brokenhearted.
Some clothes were brought for Francis, a tunic belonging to one of the bishop’s farm laborers, and a pair of rough felt boots. Francis took a piece of chalk and marked a cross on the tunic. Now he was truly a knight of Christ and the bridegroom of the Lady Poverty. He said goodbye to the bishop and went down the hall to the door, outside which the sick and ragged beggars had gathered. He passed out into their company to be one with them forever.
Chapter 4
The Builder
Ah! when Christ is grafted on the spray,
All the withered wood is cut away;
See the freshness springing from decay!
Changing to a wondrous unity.
Lo, I live! yet not my self alone;
I am I, yet am I not mine own;
And this change, cross-wise, obscure, unknown
Language cannot tell its mystery.
JACOPONE DA TODI
LAUDA LX
FRANCIS DID NOT at once start the rebuilding of San Damiano. Like a lark set free from captivity he needed first to try his wings. He felt that he must go away from Assisi, away even from his beloved lepers and the old priests at San Damiano, and experience his new freedom alone with God.
He went forth singing, happy as he had been after he had kissed the leper, experiencing once again the joy of self-conquest, the sense of shackles falling and wings unfolding. It was spring in the world as well as in his soul when he left Assisi and climbed up the mountain passes toward Gubbio. There was green grass under the melting snow and warmth in the sunshine. The swelling buds had misted the trees with color and birdsong was echoing in the woods. The little streams, swollen with snow-water, were chiming over the stones, and on the wind came the scent of wet moss and ferns and the first spring flowers opening in hidden places. He was so happy that he sang the songs of the troubadours in the beloved French tongue, his wonderful voice ringing out as musically as the streams and the birdsong. He climbed up through the changing woods, through the oaks and the pines and out onto the high bare mountain slopes above, where the wind was cold and invigorating as a draught of iced wine. Down below him he could see Assisi clinging to the slopes of Mount Subasio, and the whole vast Umbrian plain, and the mountains piled against the blue of the sky. Now he could hear the larks singing overhead, and understand as never before the passion of their joy in space and light. He was as free as they were and shared with them and with all birds and beasts and flowers this adventure of utter dependence upon God alone. It gave him a new feeling of brotherhood with them, a sense of oneness with the whole universe, that seems to men so vast yet in God’s sight is no more than a drop of dew fallen down upon the earth. Perhaps he laughed, looking at the little toy cities in the distance, and remembering how men toiled and sweated, quarreled and fought for more and more in the way of food and drink, shelter and clothing, and called it supporting themselves, and forgot that what supported them was the finger of God alone. Were he to withdraw that gentle upholding, they and the whole universe would fall into the abyss. He laughed, realizing that he was free of the whole worrying mess of earthly clutter, aware of the paradox of man’s glorious peril and his perfect safety.
He went on and came to a lonely wooded place where the hills began to decline toward Gubbio, and now his story takes a humorous twist, an anticlimax after the spiritual grandeur of the scene in the bishop’s palace. He was always poised between grief and joy, never quite knowing whether man’s condition calls more for weeping or laughter, and through the splendors of his life there ran always a homely thread of fairy-tale comedy. It took the form now of a band of robbers who leaped out at him from their hiding place and demanded who he was. Even in this startling moment he remained confident and unafraid, and able to remember that his name was John. “I am a herald of the great King!” he called out joyously. At which crazy answer they pulled off his tunic and his boots and toppled him over into a snowdrift. “Lie there, thou fool herald!” they said, and made off. Francis got up laughing and “with yet louder voice began to make the woods echo with praises unto the Creator of all.”
But in such chilly weather he could scarcely wander through the world with nothing on but a hair shirt, and he made his way to a monastery, probably that of Santa Maria della Rocca near Valfabbrica, knocked at the door and suggested to the astonished monks that he should be their servant in exchange for food and clothing. They let him in, put him to work in the kitchen, gave him food but refused him garments. Francis worked for them for a few days and then, with no ill-will but anxious for something to put on, left them and set out for Gubbio, where he had a friend who might come to his rescue. Years later, when he was famous, he received profound apologies from the prior of this monastery, and we can imagine with what delighted humor he received them.
The old walled city of Gubbio, built on the lower slopes of Monte Calvo, must have been astonished to see Francis in his hair shirt wandering up its streets. No doubt they laughed at him and no doubt that in his present joyous frame of mind he laughed back, for by this time he was becoming used to being a source of amusement. He never minded being laughed at, indeed he rejoiced in being God’s fool; the only thing he could not bear was the fame and adulation that most men live for. But if Gubbio laughed, his friend in the city, perhaps the same friend who had stood by him through the hard days at Le Grotte, entertained him more kindly. He fed him and also found for him the garments of a pilgrim, a tunic with a leather belt, sandals, wallet, and staff. For a while Francis worked in the leper hospital at Gubbio and then he tramped joyously back to Assisi. The robbers had done him no harm and he had not starved, for the God in whom he had trusted had not deserted him.
2
ONCE MORE SETTLED at San Damiano he set himself to obey the command of Christ and rebuild the ruined church. In the lengthening days of spring, when the fruit blossom was fragrant in the orchards and the warm brilliant sunshine poured over the city, Francis the troubadour was a familiar figure as he went singing his Provençal melodies through the streets of Assisi, the children tumbling at his heels. When he reached one of the open squares, those high level terraces to which he had gone in procession as a child and with the young men in his boyhood, he stopped and sang a few hymns, and when he had collected a small crowd about him he stopped singing and spoke to them. He told them about the church of San Damiano with its ruined walls and broken floor with weeds pushing up through the paving stones, and its holes in the roof through which the rain came, spattering the altar and the figure of Christ looking out over the suffering world. And then he begged for stones for the rebuilding of this little house of God. In those days when there was so much building going on in the city, including the building of the new cathedral, there was plenty of cut stone about and it was often used for barter. Money was little used except by the rich. The poorer folk supplied their necessities by exchanging one thing for another. And so Francis sang for his stones. Some thought him mad. Others, remembering the princely young figure of the past, and seeing him now in his pilgrim’s dress, worn with prayer and fasting and work that was too hard for him, were profoundly moved. “Who will give stones for the rebuilding of San Damiano?” he would say. “Whoso gives one stone shall have one reward; whoso gives two stones shall have two rewards; whoso gives three stones shall have three rewards.” And they brought him the stones, and he carried them on his thin shoulders out of the city, and down the steep pathway to San Damiano, where he girded up his tunic and set to work with a will, putting to good use the knowledge of building that had come to him as a boy when he labored at the rebuilding of the walls of Assisi. And as he worked he sang. How his frailty accomplished all this manual labor, or indeed any of th
e mighty tasks of his life, is a mystery hidden within the mystery of sanctity itself.
He was not left to work alone, for in all that he did his infinite attraction drew men after him as the music of the Pied Piper drew the children. Friendly peasants came and worked with him, and sang and laughed with him, and there was so much happiness at San Damiano that the citizens of Assisi came down in their free moments to watch the fun, and passing travelers stopped and wondered what was going on, and to them Francis called out, “Come and help us, for this church will one day be a convent of ladies whose life and fame will glorify our Heavenly Father in all the world.” And they would help too, sunning themselves in the loving charm of this young lunatic. For no doubt they dismissed what he said about the future of San Damiano as moonshine, and not as the intuition of a man whose growing selflessness was being illumined more and more by flashes of light from the timeless country where the fulfillment of the will of God is already perfected.
But work on San Damiano did not make Francis forget the lepers. He would take time off to be with them, either at San Salvatore or at the hospital of Santa Maria Maddalena, and his service to them had undergone a change since the days when he had given them money and kissed their hands. Saint Bonaventure in his life of Francis gives a grim picture of what service to lepers entailed for him now. “He would bathe their feet, and bind up their sores, drawing forth the corrupt matter from their wounds, and wiping away the blood.” One of the lepers had gone on pilgrimage to the tombs of the apostles in Rome to pray for healing, for the fearful disease had eaten away his mouth and jaw. But he came back with his prayer unanswered, and his despair can be imagined. Meeting Francis on the road he knelt down and would have kissed his footprints, so dearly did these lepers love him, but Francis bent down and took him in his arms and kissed his terrible face, and Saint Bonaventure tells us that in that moment the leper’s prayer was answered. This is the first recorded instance of the way in which the love of God was able to heal men through the love of Francis.
When a man is determined to break himself in for God he takes every opportunity for self-conquest that offers itself. No matter how small it is, it brings its added strength. One day Francis was in need of oil for the lamp which burned always now before the crucifix at San Damiano, and he went up to Assisi to beg for it. It was evening and he saw lamps burning in a house and turned toward it, but when he came near he saw a company of his old friends having a party there, the kind of party at which in old days he had been the leader, and he turned away ashamed. It would be too embarrassing, both for them and himself, to go in then, and he felt he could not do it. Then he realized that he was being a coward and he conquered himself. He went in to the feast and stood among his old friends in their colorful clothes, he in his worn pilgrim’s gown, and confessed that he was a coward who had been ashamed to come among them, and asked them for some of their oil for the love of God.
There was another thing that he did that was even harder. The old priest at San Damiano, who loved him, was distressed to see him so exhausted at the day’s end and, knowing how delicately he had been nurtured, he took great pains to cook tempting little meals for him. Francis realized suddenly that this was not true poverty. If he was not careful he would soon be enjoying the little comforts of the priest’s poor home as much as he had once enjoyed the luxuries of his father’s house. And so he took a bowl and went up to Assisi and begged for his food from door to door, for the love of God. The astonished housewives gave him such scraps as they had and when he had enough to make a meal he went away to a quiet place and sat down and looked at the nauseating fragments in his bowl. Fastidious as he was, his gorge rose. How could he possibly swallow this disgusting mess? But this was the sort of food that poverty had to eat, and he was vowed to poverty, and he must eat it. So summoning all his courage, shuddering with revulsion at every mouthful, he set to work.
As he ate a strange thing happened to him, for the feeling of nausea passed and he began to eat with appetite, and not only that but to feel a glow of happiness all through him. For with the selfconquest there had come to him one of those moments of light that came so often when he prayed, and the light illumined many things. He realized that this poor meal was not only a meal but a sacrament of the providence of God. God spreads a table for his little ones, for the birds and beasts and for the poor who put their trust in him, and is himself their servant, as Christ was the servant of his disciples when he knelt before them to wash their feet and then gave them his body and blood to be their food. He saw also that the providence of God is a circle of loving and giving, God serving his poor through the bounty of his rich, and his poor offering up their thanks to him. And he saw more deeply into the meaning of the Trinity, the love that gives and the love that accepts, returning love again, and the love that is the gift between them, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And entering a little more deeply into the meaning of poverty, he saw that it can be more blessed to receive than give. Until now he had only given, he had poured himself out in love and service, and perhaps his giving had not always been quite free from the taint of pride; for the power to help others, even though it may seem wholly good, is still power; but he had not set himself humbly to receive the service of God and man. With this humble receiving, he understood now, true humility must begin, and without it there is no true poverty. To Peter’s cry of “Thou shalt never wash my feet!” Christ had answered, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part in me,” and unless he could learn to say with Peter, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head,” he would have no part in the poverty of Christ. From that day onward he had a great reverence for beggars because they were to him the symbol of this humble acceptance, and he called the eating of this food that had been begged for the love of God eating at the table of the Lord.
Day by day now he ate nothing except these scraps of food that he begged in the streets. It was not the bread of idleness, for idleness in any sort or form was always abhorrent to him; it was the bounty of God that gave his body strength for the rebuilding of God’s church and the nursing of his sick.
But Pietro Bernadone could hardly be expected to see it in this way. That his eldest son should now be a common beggar was for him the final humiliation, and whenever he met Francis in the street he cursed him. He could have done nothing more cruel, for he knew very well the numinous dread and fear awakened by the parental curse, and he knew his son’s sensitiveness, but by now his love had so wholly passed into bitterness that he did not care how much he hurt Francis if only he could hurt him enough. At first he was successful and had his son quivering and wretched under the flaying of his tongue, but not for long, for Francis had that most enviable of gifts, the ability to confront every challenge, small or great, with the perfect response. Sometimes this response came in swift symbolic action, sometimes in a few words so perfectly phrased that they have never been forgotten. Sometimes it was the leaping out of his own ready wit, but often something much deeper than that, the answer of divine inspiration. Whichever it was, it gave a vivid freshness to his life. On this occasion he bribed an old beggar, the bribe being half shares in the miserable scraps he collected, to accompany him around the streets and be a more loving father to him than his own. Whenever they encountered Pietro, and Francis was cursed, he would turn to the old beggar, who would bless him and make over him the sign of the cross. The blessing of this adopted father took away Francis’s fear and must have annoyed Pietro extremely.
To the mockery of his brother, Angelo, Francis’s answer came from the depths of him. One day, when he was perhaps toiling along sweating and exhausted beneath a load of stone, he met Angelo strolling through the street with a companion, and Angelo said loudly to his friend, “Go and ask Francis to sell us a drop of his sweat.” Francis laughed and called back in the joyous French tongue, “Nay, I sell it more dearly to my Lord!”
3
THE MONTHS PASSED and San Damiano was finished at last, with sound roof and walls and floor to house
the treasure of the crucifix, and Francis turned to another ruined shrine outside the city, San Pietro, and then he labored at the restoration of Santa Maria Maggiore beside the bishop’s palace. When these were finished it was the turn of the little church which with San Damiano is now one of the holy places of the world.
Two miles from Assisi, and less than a mile from the leper hospital of San Salvatore where he worked, was a shrine that Francis must always have loved because it had been for long a holy place and legends had twined themselves about it, and old and far-off stories had always fascinated him. Also it was hidden in the woods, ruined and deserted, and he loved the quiet places. The church itself was a small stone building with gables at each end. Over the altar, painted on the wall, was a fresco of the Assumption of our Lady with angels surrounding her. Not far from it were a well and the fallen walls of a ruined building. The woods had taken the ruins to themselves and made them beautiful. Brambles and creepers had climbed over them and flowers grew in the crannies of the stones. Where once bells had rung out there was now the chiming of birdsong, and birds made of the church a nesting place. “The sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my king and my God.” Francis must have sung the Eighty-Fourth Psalm many times in these ruins, for at this time he left San Damiano and came to live here in the woods, and the birds, accustomed to his comings and goings, would have been undisturbed when he joined his singing to theirs.