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In the beginning I call upon the First Beginning,
from whom all illuminations descend
as from the Father of Lights,
from whom comes every good and every perfect gift.
I call upon the Eternal Father
through his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
that through the intercession of the most holy Virgin Mary,
the mother of the same God and Lord Jesus Christ,
and through the intercession of blessed Francesco,
our leader and father,
he may enlighten the eyes of our soul
to guide our feet in the way of that peace
which surpasses all understanding.
This is the peace proclaimed
and given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ
and preached again and again by our father Francesco.
At the beginning and end of every sermon he announced peace
in every greeting he wished for peace;
in every contemplation he sighed for ecstatic peace
like a citizen of that Jerusalem
of which that Man of Peace says,
who was peaceable with those who hated peace:
"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem."
For he knew that the throne of Solomon
would not stand except in peace, since it is written:
"In peace is his place and his abode in Sion."
Bonaventure, The Soul's Journey into God Prologue 1
Efforts to establish peace throughout Europe began in the tenth
century
as the French Church organized a peace movement in various
places
and persuaded nobles to renounce and outlaw private war
and violence
in order to protect pilgrims and travelers.
In 989
a council at Charroux declared the Pax Dei (Peace of God)
which
prohibited men from forcing their way into churches to plunder
them
and from usurping the property of peasants.
Anyone using
violence on noncombatants in war was to be excommunicated.
At
the Council of Le Puy the next year Le Puy bishop Guy of Anjou
urged all men to become sons of peace.
In 1023 in a conference at Mouzon, Robert the Pious of France
and
German emperor Heinrich II discussed the idea of a universal
peace pact
for their kingdoms and eventually for all Christendom.
Starting in 1027 the Truce of God was proclaimed by church
authorities
in Aquitane to regulate warfare with specific laws.
Military attacks
were prohibited after sunset on Wednesday
until sunrise on Monday
as well as on all fast days and feast days including Lent.
Most
of Gaul adopted this beneficial law as lords swore to uphold it.
All churches, unarmed clerics, and monks were declared inviolable,
and peasants, flocks, and farming implements were protected.
Armistices
were used to stop feuding parties,
and bishops got people to take
pledges for peace.
Heinrich II's son Heinrich III cooperated with
the Truce of God,
and at Constance in 1043 he pardoned all those
who had injured him
and encouraged his subjects to renounce vengeance
and hatred.
The Catholic Church was instrumental in developing canon laws
to modify the tendencies toward violence and war.
In Bologna the
monk and law teacher Gratian incorporated the results
of the second
Lateran Council (1139) in his compilation of canon law
entitled A Concordance of Differing Canons
or simply Decretum,
which was published about 1140.
In this scholastic work Gratian
attempted to remove contradictions
between the two principles
of natural law and customs for all church practices.
Gratian in
his causa 23 affirmed the old Roman law that a just war
must be based
on both a just cause, that is redress of injuries,
and a declaration by the proper authority.
A formal proclamation
should enumerate the reasons justifying the war,
but he specifically
outlawed any anticipation of imminent or future actions
to attempt
to justify preemptive attacks.
As with Augustine, love for the
enemy and the desire for lasting peace
was supposed to regulate
the conduct of the war.
Thus violence must be controlled, and
vindictiveness is disallowed.
In a just war efforts should be
made to protect non-combatants.
These principles became a part
of the chivalric ideal of knights taking up the cross.
A canon from the eleventh council of Toledo in 675 had prohibited
priests from participating in any judgments involving bloodshed.
Gratian allowed clerics to exhort others to defend the oppressed
and attack the enemies of God; but he still forbade bishops from
commanding anyone to shed blood even by imperial authority.
However,
Gratian did take the position that bishops with regalia could
use
their temporal authority to participate in an overlord's campaign
provided
that they did not order killing nor commit acts of violence
themselves.
Gratian gave permission for clerics to declare war
and gave the Pope
the greatest authority;
but those in holy orders
were forbidden to participate in the actual combat.
Yet Gratian
approved of the Church using force
against heretics to convert
them against their will.
Gratian's Decretum was influential, and several canon
lawyers wrote commentaries.
Concerned that the war of Philip II
of France to take over
Plantagenet lands in Normandy was an unjust
war,
Stephen Langton argued that soldiers could save their honor
by refusing to fight except to defend the king.
Thomas of Chobham
asked bishops to persuade soldiers from fighting in unjust wars
and hoped that it could be done unanimously without schism or
sedition.
Soldiers could remain loyal to their king but still
refuse to kill Christians or plunder.
Arnold of Brescia was a student of Abelard.
He lived simply
begging his daily bread from house to house while protesting
the
secularization of the church and aiming to restore apostolic purity
and simplicity.
Arnold criticized clergy for their worldly possessions
so vehemently
that the Brescians expelled their bishop Manfred
in 1137.
While attempting to give earthly power back to the laity,
he alienated the clergy;
for he preached that neither clerics
owning property nor bishops with regalia
nor monks with
possessions could be saved;
he also questioned the sacraments
and infant baptism.
Arnold was charged for inciting the laity
against the clergy at
the Second Lateran Council in 1139 and was
banished from Italy as a schismatic.
He went back to France, and
Pope Innocent II silenced him with Abelard in a convent.
Abelard
retired and died two years later,
but Arnold gave public lectures
in Paris criticizing the avarice of bishops
and accusing Bernard
of Clairvau of being ambitious and envying scholars.
Bernard
got King Louis VII to expel Arnold from France.
Arnold went to
Zurich, and Bernard denounced him to the bishop of Constance.
Arnold went to Passau in Germany, where he was protected
by Cardinal
Guido and reconciled with Pope Eugenius III in 1145.
Eugenius sent the radical Arnold to Rome on pilgrimage.
After
the Pope fled to France, Arnold strengthened republican sentiments
and was protected by the Senate.
Arnold argued that the pontiff
should preside only over ecclesiastical courts
and that the administration
of Rome should be
under the Senate and a revived equestrian order.
The Romans renounced papal authority,
and the city soon had a
militia like the Lombard republics.
Arnold was excommunicated
in 1148.
Adrian IV, the only English Pope, was elected in 1154.
When a cardinal was attacked and wounded by Arnold's followers,
Adrian put Rome under an interdict, banishing Arnold and his party.
Arnold himself was captured but was given refuge by sympathetic
barons.
Germany's new king Friedrich Barbarossa invaded Italy
in 1155
and destroyed Milan's ally town of Tortona.
Pope Adrian
sent a request that Arnold of Brescia should be handed over
and
executed by Friedrich, who had him hanged and his body burned,
scattering his ashes in the Tiber to prevent the people from venerating
his body.
Arnold's doctrines were eventually declared heretical
by a council at Verona in 1184.
Intolerance for what Church authorities called heresy had led
to only occasional
persecution for many centuries; but in the
13th century authorities of
the Catholic Church would launch major
efforts to eliminate heresy.
A village priest named Peter de Bruis
from the Alps preached there
and influenced the Rhone Valley for
about twenty years.
He rejected infant baptism and opposed veneration
of the cross,
preferring the teachings of the Gospels to
the traditions of the Church.
About 1140 he was killed at St.
Gilles when he was
pushed into the fire in which he was burning
crucifixes.
A priest and monk named Henri, who began his radical
preaching about 1116 at Le Mans,
became known as a Petrobrusian;
but he was ordered
to stop preaching by a council at Pisa in 1133.
Pope Eugenius III sent Bernard of Clairvaux and others in 1145
to preach against Henri, who was imprisoned by the bishop of Toulouse.
Peter Valdes was a successful merchant and money-lender at
Lyons
and asked
his friend Stephen d'Anse to translate the scriptures
into the vernacular language.
After Stephen died in an accident
in 1173, Peter suddenly gave away his wealth
for a life of poverty
in order to practice the Gospels.
His followers were called Waldensians.
They preached and had the scriptures translated into the vernacular
Occitan.
Both male and female Waldensians preached, were celibate,
and owning nothing, they lived on alms.
They memorized portions
of the vernacular Bible to enhance their preaching.
They
did not believe in taking oaths nor in killing, not even as judicial
punishment.
Peter Valdes attended the Third Lateran Council in 1179, signed
an orthodox statement
required of suspected heretics, and was
confirmed in his poverty by Pope Alexander III;
but the next year
Lyons archbishop Jean de Bellesmains forbade the Waldensians
to
preach, and in 1182 they were excommunicated and driven from the
city.
Two years later the Waldensians and the Humiliati of Lombardy
were condemned by a papal synod at Verona.
Waldensians believed
the Roman Church fell into heresy when Sylvester
was Pope (314-35), and they criticized the corruption of clergy
and rejected Church
authority and some sacraments.
Yet many of them spoke against
the Cathars,
and in 1205 the Italian and French Waldensians separated.
In 1208 those led by Durand of Huesca returned to orthodoxy and
were known
as Poor Catholics, and Pope Innocent III allowed them
to preach on moral behavior.
The Catholic Church was instrumental in developing canon laws
to modify the tendencies toward violence and war.
Concerned that the war of Philip II of France
to take over
Plantagenet lands in Normandy was an unjust war,
Stephen Langton argued that soldiers could save their honor
by
refusing to fight except to defend the king.
Thomas of Chobham
asked bishops to persuade soldiers from fighting in unjust wars
and hoped that it could be done unanimously without schism or
sedition.
Soldiers could remain loyal to their king but still
refuse to kill Christians or plunder.
Hildegard was born in Mainz in 1098, and she was only about
eight years old
when she was dedicated to a religious life in
the cell
of an anchoress named Jutta at Disibodenberg.
By the
age of 15 Hildegard was bewildered by her extraordinary perceptions,
but she eventually confided them to Jutta.
Until Jutta died in
1136, Hildegard had little contact with the world;
and then she
was appointed prioress by Abbot Kuno.
She apparently had visions
often, and her life changed dramatically in 1141
after a blinding
vision by a very brilliant light helped her understand her religious
reading.
When she did not obey the call to write, she eventually
became so sick
that she told Volmar, who got permission for her
to begin writing
her major work Scivias that took ten years
to complete.
Bernard of Clairvaux brought her writing to the attention
of Pope Eugenius,
and in 1148 the Pope sent her a letter encouraging
her to record her visions.
In 1147 Hildegard had proclaimed that
God commanded
that her nunnery move to Rupertsberg.
At first her
proposal was dismissed; but Hildegard withdrew in silence to her
bed.
They rebuilt the ruins of Rupertsberg and moved there in
1150,
gaining autonomy but compromising on property settlements.
Hildegard also resisted the leaving of her friend and assistant
Richardis,
who was appointed an abbess; though Hildegard later repented
of this attachment.
Hildegard described her own era as an effeminate time,
and
she prophesied that
the churches would have their temporal powers
confiscated as a just punishment for their greed.
She wrote to
Pope Anastasius IV prophesying the ruin of Rome; and like Joachim
of Fiore,
she foresaw rising from the ruins a new nation in which pagans, Jews, the worldly,
and the unbelievers will be converted
in a regenerated world of peace.
In 1158 Hildegard began writing
her Book of the Rewards of Life
and traveling to preach
despite her poor health.
In 1163 she undertook her cosmological Book of the Divine Works,
which was also based on visions
and took about eleven years to write.
A biography of her by Godfrey
of Disibodenberg described at length how Hildegard
exorcised a
woman who had been suffering from an evil spirit for eight years.
After Godfrey died, Guibert of Gembloux replaced him in 1177
as
Hildegard's secretary and as provost to the nuns.
In the last
year of her life before she died in 1179, Hildegard struggled
to keep
undisturbed the grave of an excommunicated man even though
the district of Mainz was put under interdict for a time.
The title Scivias means "know the ways," and
this long book is a visionary theology.
Hildegard criticized the
clergy who polluted church buildings with murders or fornication.
She recommended repentance and confession to a priest.
She approved
of marriage but condemned homosexual behavior as a sin against
God
and the ordained union of man and woman; she also criticized
masturbation and bestiality.
To reduce sexual lust she advised
replacing the meat of mammals with that of birds.
Many of the
virtues are described as being feminine.
In the vision of the
tower anticipating God's will the five strong virtues that
occur
in people by God's will are heavenly love, discipline, modesty,
mercy, and victory.
In her vision of the stone wall of the old
law Hildegard described
figures representing the eight virtues
of abstinence, liberality,
piety, truth, peace, beatitude, discretion,
and salvation.
In the final vision of the symphony of the blessed
the virtues
fight for the king of kings to win victory over the
devil's arts.
This vision was adapted into an operatic morality
play called
The Play of Virtues (Ordo virtutum), which
is an allegorical presentation
of the soul tempted by the devil
but rescued by the virtues.
Hildegard also composed canticles
and chants for religious services.
Hildegard wrote about nature and medicine, describing
more than 200 herbs
in her Physica, and she discussed healing
and herbs further in Causes and Cures.
She described the
four humors as choleric (yellow bile) that is hot and relates
to fire,
sanguine (blood) that is dry and relates to air, phlegmatic
(phlegm) that is moist
and relates to water, and melancholic (black
bile) that is cold and relates to earth.
According to this theory
illness is caused by an imbalance of these humors.
Essentially
all Hildegard's writings derive from her visions of what she called
the light of life that she said she perceived not with her senses
but within her soul.
In The Book of the Rewards of Life (Liber
vitae meritorum) Hildegard described
35 vices, and to counter
them she recommended fasting, flagellation, and ascetic prayer.
For each vice she advised the response of an appropriate virtue.
One could respond to worldly love with heavenly love, to impudence
with discipline,
to jesting with shyness, to hard-heartedness
with mercy, to slothfulness with divine victory,
to anger with
patience, and to foolish joy with sighing for God.
She noted that
impudence leads people away from honesty,
and she explained how
foolish joy can follow anger,
which she considered the worst fault.
She wrote that one could respond to gluttony with abstinence,
to bitterness with bountifulness, to impiety with piety, to falseness
with truth,
to strife with peace, to unhappiness with blessedness,
to immoderation with discretion,
and to destruction of souls with
the salvation of souls.
It is best to respond to pride with humility,
to envy with charity,
to vainglory with fear of the Lord, to disobedience
with obedience,
to unfaithfulness with faith, to despair with
hope, and to luxury with chastity.
Her visions showed how God
responds to injustice with justice, to numbness with strength,
to forgetfulness with holiness, to changeableness with steadiness,
to care of earthly things with heavenly desire, to obstinacy with
sorrow of the heart,
to desire with contempt for the world, and
to discord with concord.
She also saw how one could respond to
scurrility with reverence,
to aimlessness with quiet stability,
to wrong doing with true care of God,
to avarice with pure contentment,
and to the sorrow of time with heavenly joy.
She observed that
good masters, like good air,
guide their disciples with discretion
and immediate correction.
She concluded this visionary book with
descriptions of heavenly joys and blessings.
Born at Assisi in Umbria probably in September 1181,
his mother
Pica had her first son baptized Giovanni after John the Baptist.
His father Pietro di Bernardone was a cloth merchant traveling
in France;
when he returned, he re-named the boy Francesco after
that country.
According to the earliest biography by Thomas of
Celano, Francesco received
little
or no religious instruction
when he was young and thus was under the sway of his vices.
Brought
up with servants, the wealthy young Francesco worked
in his father's
lucrative business and was generous to his friends
in games and
entertainment, becoming a leader among his peers.
In 1199 a civil war broke out in Assisi.
The burghers and lower
classes (minores) revolted against the nobles,
who were
defeated and fled to Perugia, including the families of Clare
and Leonardo.
Francesco may have learned how to use brick and
mortar
in the wall around Assisi then erected.
Francesco fought
for Assisi against their rival Perugia in November 1202 at the
battle
of Collestrada; but they were defeated, and he was captured
and held prisoner for a year.
When he became ill, Francesco was
ransomed by his father.
After two years of illness he still dreamed
of becoming a knight;
he outfitted himself better than most knights
and went to join the papal forces
led by Count Gentile against
Friedrich II in Apulia; but in 1205 at Spoleto
he had a vision
guiding him to return to Assisi to serve God instead of a lower
master.
Thomas of Celano wrote that Francesco began to despise
himself and feel contempt
for the things he had valued and loved
before.
He was promised a most beautiful spouse, who would excel
all in wisdom.
He prayed in solitude to learn the will of God
and went on a pilgrimage to Rome,
where mingling with beggars
he overcame his loathing of leprosy by kissing a leper.
While praying in the ruins of the San Damiano church near Assisi,
Francesco received the message that he should repair the broken-down
church.
So he went home, gathered some cloth, and sold it with
his horse at Foligno,
planning to give the money to the priest
at San Damiano.
His father complained and locked him up for several
days;
but while his father was gone, his mother released him.
When his father took him to the bishop, Francesco gave everything
he had
back to his father, even stripping off his clothes
so that
the bishop was moved to cover him with a mantle.
He once was thrown
into a ditch of snow by robbers,
and he worked for a few days
as a scullion in a monastery.
Francesco lived with lepers and
washed them at Gubbio in 1206.
One day he upbraided a poor man
for begging;
but later he repented, reproached himself, and vowed
he would never again refuse anyone who asked for the love of God.
Living in poverty and dressing like a hermit, Francesco worked
restoring San Damiano and the Porziuncula chapel.
On February
24, 1208 he heard a mass that included the instructions
Jesus
gave to his disciples going out to preach.
So Francesco reduced
himself to even simpler poverty, giving up
his extra cloak and
sandals, and he began to preach repentance.
In April 1208 Francesco gained his first companions or disciples
that included Bernard, Peter Catanii, and Giles.
Bernard set the
example of selling all his goods and giving the money to the poor.
Francesco and Giles went on a mission to the Marches of Ancona.
Philip and two others joined the band that summer, and soon four
pairs
went on missions with Bernard and Giles going to Florence.
In 1209 Francesco wrote his first rule for his eleven companions,
and they went to Rome to gain the approval of Pope Innocent III.
Sabina bishop John became their advocate and argued that if the
pontiff refused
their request because he considered it too difficult,
he would be offending the teaching of Jesus.
Francesco told a
parable about a rich king
who had children by a beautiful but
poor woman.
Francesco said that he was that woman and that the
Eternal King
would provide for the poor children, his followers.
The Pope told Francesco to preach penance to all.
As they traveled
through the Spoleto valley, they begged from door to door as needed.
They practiced holy simplicity, which Francesco called the daughter
of grace,
the sister of wisdom, and the mother of justice.
He
noted that pleasure is short, but punishment is eternal;
suffering
is small compared to infinite glory; retribution comes to all.
Few writings of Francesco exist.
Among his Admonitions
is the following:
Where there is charity and wisdom,
there is neither fear nor ignorance.
Where there is patience and humility,
there is neither anger nor disturbance.
Where there is poverty with joy,
there is neither covetousness nor avarice.
Where there is inner peace and meditation,
there is neither anxiousness nor dissipation.
Where there is fear of the Lord to guard the house,
there the enemy cannot gain entry.
Where there is mercy and discernment,
there is neither excess nor hardness of heart.1
Francesco preached boldly without flattery or seductive blandishments.
He reproved himself sternly and disciplined others similarly,
saying that he corrected and chastised those whom he loved.
He
named his Order Friars Minor, because he considered them lesser
brothers.
Thomas of Celano described the group as having chaste
embraces, gentle feelings,
pleasing conversation, modest laughter,
joyous looks, submissive spirits,
peaceable tongues, mild answers,
oneness of purpose,
ready obedience, and unwearied hands.
They
did not resist insults, ridicule, beatings, robbing nor imprisonment,
and they did not seek patronage for protection.
Francesco taught
his companions to consider money like dung, and so they avoided
it.
They despised all worldly things and strove for peace and
gentleness.
Francesco slept on the bare ground and rarely ate
cooked food.
If he saw someone with garments worse than
what he
was wearing, he would give them his.
He preached to the birds
and other animals
that they should be grateful to their Creator.
Francesco believed that the safest guard against
the devil's temptations
is inner spiritual joy.
Thus he made a point of keeping joy in
his heart.
He avoided the miserable illness of dejection.
If he
felt it creeping into his mind even a little,
he would quickly
have recourse to prayer.
In 1211 Francesco embarked for Palestine but was shipwrecked
in Dalmatia.
The next year Clare of Favarone (1194-1253) came
back to Assisi,
and after staying in convents for a few weeks
she moved into San Damiano
while Count Orlando offered Mount La
Verna to Francesco as a hermitage.
Clare was joined by her cousin
Pacifica of Guelfuccio
and her own younger sister Agnes, and the
religious community
of Clare and her poor sisters was soon organized.
Francesco once wrote to her, "Live always in the truth, that
you may die in obedience.
Do not look at the life outside, for
that of the Spirit is better."2
Some time before attending
the Fourth Lateran Council,
Francesco visited Spain but was too
ill to go to Morocco.
In 1217 missions were sent beyond the Alps
and abroad.
Giles went to Tunis and Elias to Syria, and Francesco
was stopped
on his way to France by Cardinal Hugolino of Ostia.
In 1219 Hugolino wrote the Rule for the Poor Ladies
that
was approved by Francesco and confirmed by Pope Honorius III.
In 1219 Francesco wrote a letter to the rulers of the peoples
warning them
to pause and reflect, because the day of death is
approaching.
Those who are wiser and more powerful in this world
will have greater punishments in the next.
He urged them to remember
God and follow the commandments,
suggesting that a town crier
be appointed to exhort people to thank and praise God.
John of
La Penna led sixty brothers to Germany, and the troubadour Pacifico,
who had been crowned king of the poets by the Emperor, went to
France.
Giles went to Tunis, and the five brothers who went to
Morocco suffered martyrdom.
Also in 1219 Francesco went to the
crusade at Damietta,
where after being insulted
and beaten he
tried to convert the Egyptian sultan Malik al-Kamil.
Francesco
despised the many rich gifts bestowed upon him,
impressing the
Sultan as someone unique.
According to a companion, Francesco
had a vision that the Christians would lose
the battle that was
about to occur; but his warnings, forbidding of the war,
and denunciations
of its reasons were to no avail.
In the defeat it was reported
that 6,000 Christians were killed or captured.
Francesco visited
Palestine, and during these travels he contracted an eye infection.
When Francesco returned to Italy by way of Venice,
Cardinal
Hugolino was appointed protector of the Order.
Brothers were established
in a house in St. Denis near Paris,
where they were led by the
theologian Aymon of Faversham.
Francesco recovered from malaria
but gave up the leadership
to Peter Catanii and obeyed him; but
Peter died in March 1221.
Elias became vicar, and 3,000 brothers
attended the Pentecost chapter that year.
Cardinal Hugolino also
protected the Order of Poor Ladies founded by Clare,
and the third
Order for married men and women called
the Penitential Brothers
was approved by Pope Honorius.
They were to be in the world but
not of the world.
Those joining pledged to give back all unjustly
acquired goods, to pay tithes owed,
to make their wills, and not
to swear nor hold public office.
They wore a distinctive poor
habit and spent their time in prayer and works of charity.
Francesco
and Hugolino, who was living in Bologna, wrote their first Rule
that
prohibited the carrying of weapons and required
women to
gain their husbands' consent before joining.
The Rule Francesco wrote for the Lesser Brothers states
that brothers
must live without anything of their own and in chastity
and obedience.
Anyone wanting to accept their life should
sell
all his possessions and give them to the poor.
The brothers should
not become involved in these
temporal affairs nor should they
accept money.
After a probation of one year the brother may be
accepted into obedience.
All brothers should wear poor clothes
that can be patched with sackcloth.
The brothers are to pray the
divine office and fast from
All Saints until Christmas and from
Epiphany until Easter.
Brothers are assigned to provinces but
may meet once a year.
No one is bound to obey anything that is
contrary to their life or against their conscience,
but they should
reasonably and diligently consider the actions of ministers and
servants,
admonishing them if they are not according to the Spirit.
Any brother wishing to live according to the flesh is to be
admonished,
instructed, and corrected humbly and diligently.
The Rule further states that no one is to be called
Prior as they are all Lesser Brothers.
In their work none should
be administrators or managers;
they may have tools for their trades.
They are not to receive nor carry money for any purpose
except
what is needed to care for sick brothers.
Alms are a legacy from
Jesus and are the due right of the poor.
Everything people leave
behind in the world will perish,
but they will be rewarded by
the Lord for the charity they have done.
Brothers are not to murmur
nor detract from others.
They should avoid impure glances and
association with women.
A brother committing the sin of fornication
is to be expelled from the Order.
Brothers are not to ride horses
except for an extreme necessity or sickness.
No brother is to
preach contrary to the Church and only if authorized.
Yet all
brothers may preach by their deeds.
Francesco wrote the second Rule two years later; it was discussed in Rome
and also
was approved by Pope Honorius, whom Francesco promised to obey.
In 1224 a mission was sent to England, and that summer
Elias
received the message that Francesco only had two years to live.
After fasting, Francesco was believed to have received the stigmata
of nail wounds
in the hands and feet and a spear wound in the
side
as though he had been crucified; but he kept it secret.
He
showed his love of nature in his famous "Canticle to Brother
Sun."
In the various biographies many incidents are described
in which Francesco
performed healings or showed with his words
that he
understood spiritually things that occurred during his
absence.
He prophesied that Perugia would fall into a civil war;
soon after that
the citizens of Perugia fought the knights, and
the nobles attacked the common people,
each destroying the vineyards
and fields of the other.
Francesco wanted all his brothers to
work, and he encouraged them to learn a craft.
He would reproach
anyone who was idle and vagrant, calling him Brother Fly,
because
he did nothing good himself, poisoned the good of others,
and
was useless and obnoxious to all.
He referred to his body as Brother
Ass, for he subjected it to heavy labor,
beating it with whips,
and feeding it the poorest food.
Francesco suffered frequent infirmities, because he chastised
his body
and was exhausted, traveling with little sleep.
Although
he taught that brother body should be provided with discretion,
Thomas of Celano wrote that this was his only teaching in which
his actions
differed from his words; for Francesco would subject
his innocent body to
scourgings and want, multiplying its wounds
without cause.
By 1225 he was so ill that he had to ride a donkey.
For a long time Francesco refused to see a doctor.
Finally Brother
Elias persuaded him to do so.
His head was cauterized; his veins
were bled;
and plasters and eye-salves were applied; but his condition
became worse.
Nearly blind, Francesco kept on, saying, "Let
us begin, brothers,
to serve the Lord God, for up to now we have
made little or no progress."3
He warned that it was dangerous
to rule, especially in such a wicked era.
In the last year of
his life Francesco, though ill, helped to make peace
between the
bishop and the podesta who were feuding in Assisi.
He composed
new verses for his Sun Song:
Praised be You, my Lord,
through those who give pardon for Your love
and bear infirmity and tribulation.
Blessed are those who endure in peace,
for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.4
Following the song the podesta and Bishop Guido embraced and
forgave each other.
Six months before his death, Francesco became
even more ill with a serious
stomach condition and an infected
liver that caused him to vomit blood.
Before he died on October
3, 1226, Francesco gave Brother Elias his special blessing
and
warned his disciples of coming tribulations and scandals that
would separate some.
Many miraculous healings were attributed
to Francesco, and he was proclaimed
a saint in 1228 after Hugolino
became Pope Gregory IX.
Also in 1228 the Pope issued a document allowing Clare and
her sisters
to live in poverty and reject worldly goods.
They
followed the principles of Francesco but stayed
within their communities
instead of going out into the world.
After 1234 Clare wrote letters
to Bohemian king Ottokar's daughter Agnes,
who supported her efforts
for a more strict rule in line with the poverty ideals
of Francesco
rather than the Benedictine Rule.
Pope Innocent IV gave
the Poor Ladies a new Rule in 1247.
Clare also practiced
such severe asceticism and penance
that her health was poor for
28 years.
She wrote a Rule calling for more intense poverty
and died two days after
Innocent IV approved it with the papal
bull Solet annuere in 1253.
When Clare died, the Poor Ladies
had 68 nunneries in Italy, 21 in Spain,
14 in France, and 8 in
the Germanic countries.
Bonaventure was born as Giovanni Fidanza in Bagnorea, Tuscany
about 1217.
His father was a physician, but Bonaventure believed
he was saved from death by the intercession of Francesco of Assisi.
He entered the University of Paris in 1235 and earned his master
of arts degree in 1243.
Then he joined the Franciscan order and
was named Bonaventure,
studying theology in their college at the
University for five more years.
He was influenced by Alexander
of Hales, who died in 1245.
He began lecturing and wrote a commentary
on the Sentences of Peter Lombard,
attaining a master of
theology degree in 1254.
The next year Bonaventure was excluded
from the University faculty
because of a controversy over the
mendicant orders.
He defended the Franciscans from William of
St. Amour's charges
that they defamed the Gospel by their
begging and poverty.
In 1257 Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas were reinstated
as faculty
at the University of Paris by papal intervention.
However, the
same year Bonaventure was elected minister general of the Franciscans,
and he turned his attention to monastic administration.
He showed
how one could attain God through love in his
Journey of the
Mind to God, written in 1259.
The next year he revised the
constitutions of the Franciscan Order,
and in 1263 he published
a biography of Francesco of Assisi.
In 1265 he declined the appointment
as archbishop of York,
but he was made bishop of Albano and a
cardinal in 1273.
At the Council of Lyons in 1274 Bonaventure
preached for a reunion
with the Eastern Church, but he died during
the conference.
While his contemporary Thomas Aquinas emphasized
contemplation,
Bonaventure recommended the mystical path of love
to union with God.
Bonaventure divided moral philosophy into ethics, economics,
and politics.
Ethics has to do with a person's actions as an individual,
economics as a member of domestic society, and politics as a member
of civil society.
In Bonaventure's philosophy the universe emanates
from God,
the divine is the exemplar of life, and God is the goal
and perfect end.
Human action is good when the will producing
it is good,
and the will is only good when it conforms to God
as the directing principle
and is ultimately united to God in
a peaceful end.
If the relation with God is broken, then evil
enters.
Although an evil intention makes an action bad,
a good
intention is not sufficient to make an action good.
Not only must
the end intended be good; the action itself must also be good.
Bonaventure believed that to serve God is the greatest freedom,
because to serve the divine is to rule.
He defined natural law
as the impression made on the soul by eternal law.
Although some
people may be ignorant of written laws, everyone can know
the
natural law that is imprinted in all by the Creator.
From this
natural law Bonaventure derived the precepts that
God should be
honored, loved, and feared;
parents should be respected and revered;
hierarchical order should be observed;
peace should be maintained;
all should be given their due;
you should not do to others what
you do not want them to do to you;
and you should do to others
what you want them to do to you.
Bonaventure considered conscience
a habit of the practical intellect
that corresponds to science,
a habit of the speculative intellect.
Conscience derives from
natural law; but in its practical application
it may or may not
conform to divine will, because it is prone to error.
When a rule
of action is discovered to be contrary to natural law,
a person
is obligated to reform it.
Bonaventure used the term "synderesis"
to refer to that within the soul
that does always incline the
will toward good, that causes it
to shrink from what is evil,
and that feels remorse after evil is committed.
Bonaventure found that humans are social because they desire
companionship,
because they are not self-sufficient but need others
to satisfy natural desires,
and because they share their gifts
with others.
This includes sharing knowledge, and Bonaventure
considered it a sin to know
and to refuse to teach others just
as it is a sin
for a wealthy person to refuse to help the needy.
Thus aid to fellows should be economical, educational, and moral.
Order is part of natural law and also affects social order.
Bonaventure
compared society to an organism that requires cooperation
between
its elements, and various functions require a hierarchy of powers,
offices, and dignities based on differing abilities, aptitudes,
and merits.
He believed that the need for submission and obedience
makes authority
naturally lawful so that humans can live in peace
and harmony.
Justice is the general principle of social order.
Bonaventure's
first law of justice is to worship, honor, praise, and obey God.
The second law of justice regulates our relations to our neighbors,
and it is based on the two aspects of the golden rule,
or what
some call the golden and silver rules.
Bonaventure called the
principle stated in the negative
(do not do to others what you
do not wish others to do to you) the law of innocence,
and the
positive principle (do to others what you wish others to do to
you)
the law of beneficence or doing good.
His third law of justice
is the duty of rulers and subjects to work for the common good.
Rulers are to govern, not for their own private interests, but
for the good of all,
and the subjects should aid the rulers by
seeing that the rules are observed.
Bonaventure's fourth principle
of moral justice is having correct judgment
in regard to persons,
things, and ways of acting.
Yet even justice is not sufficient
for social well-being because
it tends to deteriorate if the most
essential ingredient of love is lacking.
More than anything, charity
fosters and protects right order,
and it promotes the practice
of virtue and observance of law.
Charity above all produces true
and perfect harmony in society.
A good society depends on the mutual aid of its various members.
Free will is what enables humans to act in conformity with their
rational
and social nature according to the divine plan imprinted
in our spiritual nature.
For Bonaventure the ultimate end of society
is to help humans
attain eternal happiness in union with God by
providing the material,
intellectual, and moral elements that
enable people to live virtuously.
Bonaventure believed that society
requires some authority to guide
and direct all to the common
goods as the head directs the physical body.
Bonaventure perceived
a hierarchy in nature that should also be reflected in society
with differing entities being influenced from those above while
influencing those below to purify, illuminate, and perfect.
Just
below the divine hierarchy of God and the angels are humans,
which
he called the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Manual workers produce
the material goods needed by all to live.
Government administrators
and workers are needed to protect,
defend, and assist in order
to uphold order, justice, and peace.
Bonaventure saw the spiritual
good being advanced by the prelates correcting
the erring and
instructing people while the contemplatives are devoted to prayer.
Each of the three groups needs the others so that
all may receive
support, protection, and consolation.
The secular and clerical
authorities should cooperate together for the betterment of all.
Bonaventure believed that the natural desire for procreation
in humans
can find expression by natural law in marriage, which
he defined as
the union of a man and a woman living together in
undivided partnership.
The generative instinct that all animals
share
should be governed in humans by rational faculties.
In addition
to the conjugal love required for procreation,
humans have the
social love of living together in friendship.
All people are free
to marry or not to marry, even slaves.
No one is obliged to marry
because the species is continued by others.
Bonaventure believed
the male characteristics of strength, virility, and stability
complement the feminine traits of weakness, gentleness, and tenderness.
Both men and women are equally endowed with rationality and are
therefore equal.
Women are meant to be companions of men but not
their slaves;
their obligations and rights are equal, though Bonaventure
did grant
the husband authority over the wife, as the prince rules
a subject.
The value of the marriage contract is for unity and
stability
as well as for teaching the children.
Bonaventure recommended
marriage for life and considered fidelity a moral good.
Matrimony
is a love-society.
Parental authority derives from their procreation of children,
and Bonaventure believed the father should be educator, provider,
and benefactor.
The mother loves the home and is to help the father,
who must defend the children and the peace of the domestic order.
Yet parental authority declines as the child matures, and they
may not interfere
with their children's innate right to choose
their own life
especially after they leave the household.
Parents
should watch over the moral development,
inculcating good habits
so their children may acquire virtues.
Bonaventure considered
it the duty of the father to leave his worldly goods to his children.
Because children receive so much from their parents,
they are
obligated to revere, obey, and do good to their parents.
Natural
law commands children to love their parents even more than their
own children.
Yet the obligation to obey one's parents ends when
the son or daughter reaches majority and leaves their household.
No one is bound to obey any authority that commands something
against God's law.
When the state is badly administered, Bonaventure blamed the
people.
He observed that leaders selected by heredity tend to
govern badly,
and he argued that societies in which the rulers
are elected by the people are far better regulated.
If order is
not preserved but is perverted,
the ruler deserves to lose his
authority and power.
Christians are obligated to obey earthly
authorities
but only in what is reasonable and not against God.
If one is commanded to do anything contrary to God's laws,
Bonaventure
held that one is forbidden to obey.
The best government respects
and takes into consideration
the needs and desires of the people,
but those in authority have the duty
to constrain those who violate
the right order.
Those elected to positions of authority should
have
knowledge of law-making and administration.
In discussing
religious authorities Bonaventure believed that they should have
the six virtues of justice, compassion, patience, an exemplary
life, prudence, and piety.
Bonaventure believed that the responsibility of a father to
care for his children
grants him the right of having private property.
Because people are corrupt, it is needed to prevent quarrels and
contention,
though some groups such as the Franciscans are able
to share things in common.
He did not condemn riches themselves
but the inordinate desire for riches.
Dissipation is when earthly
goods are not well distributed.
Aiding the poor is not merely
charity but justice as well
because excess riches should belong
to the poor and be distributed to them.
Bonaventure condemned
usury as the misappropriation of what belongs to another.
The
rich should assist the needy and be satisfied with having a loan
repaid in full.
Yet Bonaventure believed that everyone who is
capable should work,
though not all work is manual labor.
Those
who supply people's spiritual needs are also working for the good
of society.
Bonaventure emphasized the four cardinal virtues of
prudence,
temperance, courage, and justice.
Prudence discovers and selects
the virtuous mean; temperance guards it;
justice distributes it;
and courage defends it.
Temperance modifies; prudence rectifies;
justice orders; and courage stabilizes.
He considered prudence
the most essential of all the moral virtues.
Of Aristotle's twelve
virtues of moderation he selected as
sufficient for the eradication
of vice the following six:
chastity, generosity, fortitude, gentleness,
goodness, and magnanimity.
He also found the three theological
virtues of faith, hope, and love necessary for salvation.
Bonaventure
envisioned a society of mutual aid rather than competition,
a
society of friends, not rivals and strangers.
He pleaded for mercy
and sharing, hoping all would share their gifts.
He wrote,
As good dispensers of the divine gifts,
each one is bound to administer to the other
according to what he has received.
This is done by aiding the needy, by teaching the ignorant,
by correcting the delinquent, by bearing with the malicious,
by comforting the afflicted, by elevating the fallen,
by having compassion on all unfortunates,
by showing peace and love to all men.5
For Bonaventure love is what unifies and crowns the social
order
that goes from God to ourselves to blood relatives to friends
and associates
to all humans including strangers and enemies and
finally to our bodies.
Love is the mother of all virtues,
and
charity is what produces a true and perfect oneness among all.
1. Francis of Assisi, The Admonitions 27 tr. Regis J.
Armstrong and Ignatius C. Brady in Francis and Clare: The Complete
Works, p. 35.
2. Francis of Assisi, "The Canticle of Exhortation to Saint
Clare and Her Sisters" 2-3 tr. Regis J. Armstrong and Ignatius
C. Brady in Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, p. 40.
3. Thomas of Celano, The First Life of St. Francis 103,
book 2, chapter 6, tr. Placcid Hermann, p. 94.
4. Francis of Assisi, "The Canticle of Brother Sun"
10-11 tr. Regis J. Armstrong and Ignatius C. Brady in Francis
and Clare: The Complete Works, p. 39.
5. S. de Diversis, De Modo Vivendi, IX, p. 724 quoted in
De Benedictis, Matthew M., The Social Thought of Saint Bonaventure,
p. 255.
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