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The appearance of all great men in the world is followed invariably by the rise of that mythopoeic spirit and that tendency to look for the marvellous, which is so fatal to true historical criticism. An Alexander, a Napoleon, a Francis of Assisi and a Mahomet are thought to be outside the limiting conditions of rational law, just as comets were supposed to be not very long ago.
But far from harming his mystic undertakings, this book favors them in this sense, that, corrected by his later work, he will become honest and exemplary; and the gold that he has received in payment, which would not have been paid to him for a more chaste volume, will serve for a pilgrimage to Assisi." Madame Martin asked how much of this story was really true.
First comes Assisi, with S. M. degli Angeli below; then Spello; then Foligno; then Trevi; and, far away, Spoleto; with, reared against those misty battlements, the village height of Montefalco the "ringhiera dell'Umbria," as they call it in this country.
Let us here refresh our memories of what we may have read of that delightful saint, Francis of Assisi. He was born in 1182, the son of a well-to-do nobleman, in the little town of Assisi in Umbria, and as a lad became inflamed with the ideal of the religious life.
Many, however, joined them in order to live an idle life, supported by the gifts of others. Eva eagerly opposed this view, maintaining that true piety could be most surely found in the order of St. Francis. Then, with warm enthusiasm, she praised its founder, asserting that, on the contrary, the Saint of Assisi had enjoined labour upon his followers.
From Lucerne they went on to Milan and Bologna and to Florence, which they reached on May 3rd, which they made their headquarters for the next three weeks, seeing all that was interesting in the city and the neighbourhood, and visiting Siena, Chiusi, Perugia, and Assisi. Then to Spezia, Turin, Geneva, and to Paris on the 24th.
In spite of the fact that truth has gradually been revealed to the world by what may be called an Apostolic Succession of Personalities, Augustine, Dante, Francis of Assisi, Luther, Shakespeare, Milton, and our own Lincoln and Phillips Brooks, to mention only a few, the Church as a whole has been blind to it.
We thus find here a comprehensiveness unlike the attitude of the Baptist or St. Paul, and like, although far exceeding, the joy in nature and the peace in suffering of St. Francis of Assisi. For our Lord here promptly corrects Peter's conception of 'Messiah' by repeated insistence upon 'the Son of Man' His glory yet also His sufferings.
Whoever fights ceaselessly against his own selfishness, and strives to supplant it with all-embracing love, is a saint, whether he live in a cottage or in the midst of riches and influence; or whether he preaches or remains obscure. To the worldling, who is beginning to aspire towards higher things, the saint, such as a sweet St. Francis of Assisi, or a conquering St.
Unroll the precedents of the Church's past; recall to your minds that Francis of Assisi was among the precursors of Dante; that sworn to Poverty he forswore not Beauty, but discerned through the lamp Beauty the Light God; that he was even more a poet in his miracles than in his melody; that poetry clung round the cowls of his Order.
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