St Francis of Assisi

A sketch of St. Francis of Assisi in modern English may be written in
one of three ways. Between these the writer must make his selection; and
the third way, which is adopted here, is in some respects the most
difficult of all. At least, it would be the most difficult if the other
two were not impossible.

First, he may deal with this great and most amazing man as a figure in
secular history and a model of social virtues. He may describe this
divine demagogue as being, as he probably was, the world's one quite
sincere democrat. He may say (what means very little) that St. Francis
was in advance of his age. He may say (what is quite true) that St.
Francis anticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the
modern mood; the love of nature; the love of animals; the sense of
social compassion; the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity and
even of property. All those things that nobody understood before
Wordsworth were familiar to St. Francis. All those things that were
first discovered by Tolstoy could have been taken for granted by St
Francis. He could be presented, not only as a human but a humanitarian
hero; indeed as the first hero of humanism. He has been described as a
sort of morning star of the Renaissance. And in comparison with all
these things, his ascetical theology can be ignored or dismissed as a
contempory accident, which was fortunately not a fatal accident. His
religion can be regarded as a superstition, but an inevitable
superstition, from which not even genius could wholly free itself; in
the consideration of which it would be unjust to condemn St. Francis for
his self denial or unduly chide him for his chastity. It is quite true
that even from so detached a standpoint his stature would still appear
heroic. There would still be a great deal to be said about the man who
tried to end the Crusades by talking to the Saracens or who interceded
with the Emporer for the birds. The writer might describe in a purely
historical spirit the whole of the Franciscan inspiration that was felt
in the painting of Giotto, in the poetry of Dante, in the miracle plays
that made possible the modern drama, and in so many things that are
already appreciated by the modern culture. He may try to do it, as
others have done, almost without raising any religious question at all.
In short, he may try to tell the story of a saint without God; which is
like being told to write the life of Nansen and forbidden to mention the
North Pole.

Second, he may go to the opposite extreme, and decide, as it were, to be
defiantly devotional. He may make the theological enthusiasm as
thoroughly the theme as it was the theme of the first Franciscans. He
may treat religion as the real thing that it was to the real Francis of
Assisi. He can find an austere joy, so to speak, in parading the
paradoxes of asceticism and all the topsy-turveydom of humility. He can
stamp the whole history with the Stigmata, record fasts like fights
against a dragon; till in the vague modern mind St Francis is as dark a
figure as St. Dominic. In short, he can produce what many in our world
will regard as a sort of photographic negative; the reversal of all
lights and shades; what the foolish will find as impenetrable as
darkness and even many of the wise will find almost as invisible as if
it were written in silver upon white. Such a study of St. Francis would
be unintelligible to anyone who does not share his religion, perhaps
only partly intelligible to anyone who does not share his vocation.
According to degrees of judgement, it will be regarded as something too
bad or too good for the world. The only difficulty about doing the thing
in this way is that it cannot be done. It would really require a saint
to write about the life of a saint. In the present case the objections
to such a course are insuperable.

Third, he may try to do what I have tried to do here; and as I have
already suggested, the course has peculiar problems of its own. The
writer may put himself in the position of the ordinary modern outsider
and enquirer; as indeed the present writer is still largely and was once
entirely in that position. He may start from the standpoint of a man who
already admires St. Francis, but only for those things which such a man
finds admirable. In other words he may assume that the reader is at
least as enlightened as Renan or Matthew Arnold; but in the light of
that enlightenment he may try to illimunate what Renan and Matthew
Arnold left dark. He may try to use what is understood to explain what
is not understood.