§ 70. ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI. 399
of peace and descended the mountain with them. A new era was begun. Henceforth the pillow of the friends was a stone, their diet bread and water, and their convent the world.1
In 1212 Clara of Sciffi entered into the horizon of Francis' life. She was twelve years his junior and sixteen when she first heard him preach at the Cathedral of Assisi. The ser mon entered her soul. With Francis' aid she escaped from her father's house, and was admitted to vows by him.2 He conducted her to a house of Benedictine nuns. A younger sister, Agnes, followed Clara. The Chapel of St. Damian was set apart for them, and there the order of Clarisses was inaugurated. Clara outlived Francis, and in 1253 expired in the presence of brothers Leo, Angelo, and Ginefro.
In 1217 Francis was presented to Honorius III. and the curia. At the advice of Cardinal Ugolino, later Gregory IX., he prepared himself and memorized the sermon. Arrived in the pontiff's presence, he forgot what he had prepared and delivered an impromptu discourse, which won the assembly.
Francis made evangelistic tours through Italy which were extended to Egypt and Syria 1219. Returning from the East the little Poor Man, il poverello, found a new element had been introduced into the brotherhood through the in fluence of the stern disciplinarian Ugolino. This violent
1 Jacopone da Todi took up the idea and represented Poverty going through the earth and knocking at the door of convent after convent, and being turned away. Hase, with reference to Francis' apotheosis of Poverty, says, that Diogenes was Called a mad Socrates, and so Francis was a mad Christ, ein verruckter Christus. Kirchengesch. II. 382. In its opening chapter the Commercimn explains the beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," to refer to the renunciation of worldly goods, and puts into the hands of Poverty the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
2 Francis was a deacon and never a priest. According to Thomas a Celano, Francis was austere in his relations to women, and knew only two women by sight. Sabatier, pp. 169 sq., pronounces this portraiture false and speaks of " the love of St. Francis and St. Clara." Here, as in other places, the biographer allows himself the license of the idealist. Francis' last mes sage to Clara is given in the Speculum Perfectionis, pp. 180 sqq. The Francis can Rule of 1223 forbids "suspicious conferences with women," but allows the friars to enter monastaries of nuns by permission of the Holy See. See Robinson, p. 73.
400 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
change made the rest of the years a time of bitter, though scarcely expressed, sorrow for him. Passing through Bologna in 1220, he was pained to the depths at seeing a house being erected for the brothers. Cardinal Ugolino had determined to manipulate the society in the interest of the curia. He had offered Francis his help, and Francis had accepted the offer. Under the cardinal's influence, a new code was adopted in 1221, and still a third in 1223 in which Francis' distinc tive wishes were set aside. The original Rule of poverty was modified, the old ideas of monastic discipline introduced, and a new element of absolute submission to the pope added. The mind of Francis was too simple and unsophisticated for the shrewd rulers of the church. The policy of the ecclesi astic henceforth had control of the order.1 Francis was set aside and a minister-general, Pietro di Catana, a doctor of laws and a member of the nobility, was put at the head of the society. This was the condition of affairs Francis found on his return from Syria. He accepted it and said to his brethren, " From henceforth I am dead for you. Here is brother Peter di Catana whom you and I will obey," and prostrating himself, he promised the man who had superseded him obedience and submission.2
This forced self-subordination of Francis offers one of the most touching spectacles of mediaeval biography. Francis
1 According to the Speculum, pp. 1-4, 76, Francis made three Rules. Sabatier defines them as the Rule of 1210, confirmed by Innocent III., the Rule of 1221, confirmed by Honorius III., which in part misrepresented Francis' views. The Rule of 1223 went further in this direction and com pletely overthrew Francis' original intention. The first clause of the Rule of 1223 runs, "Brother Francis promises obedience and reverence to the lord pope, Honorius, and his successors." This rule is still in force in the first Franciscan order. Madonnet substantially agrees with Sabatier as does Karl Miiller. Father Robinson, himself a Franciscan friar, pp. 25-31, 182, following the Quaracchi editors, who are Franciscans also, denies the genuine ness of the Rule of 1221, and holds that there were only two Rules, and that there is no conflict between them. This conclusion is in the face of Francis' will and the plain statement of Leo's Legenda which, however, Robinson pays little attention to.
2 See Sabatier, S. Francois, p. 23. Peter of Catana died March 10, 1221, a year after his elevation.