Francis lavished itself on the brute creation as well as on man — on insects, birds, and beasts, whom he was wont to call his brethren and sisters, and for whom he was never weary in caring. All the stories related of him and his immediate disciples, in fact, are instinct with infinite love and self-sacrifice, with the perfection of humility and patience and long-suffering, with the control of the passions, and with endless striving to subdue all that renders human nature imperfect, and to realize the standard which Christ had erected for the guidance of man. Viewed in this aspect, even the semi-blasphemy of the " Book of Conformities of Christ and Francis " loses its grotesqueness. We may, indeed, smile at the absurdity of some of its parallels, and they may seem shocking enough when cleverly presented, stripped of all that softens them, in the "Alcoran des Cordeliers." We may doubt the verity of the Stigmata which it took so long and so many miracles, and repetition of papal bulls, to impose upon the incredulity of a hard-hearted generation. We may think that Satan showed less than his usual shrewdness when he so repeatedly wasted his energies in seeking to tempt or to terrify the saint in the crude form of a lion or of a dragon. Yet, in spite of all the absurdities of the cult of St. Francis, we recognize the profound impression which his virtues made on his followers in the vision which showed the heavenly throne of Lucifer, next to the Highest, kept vacant to be filled by Francis.[1]
To the pride and cruelty of the age he opposed patience and humility. "The perfection of gladness," he says, "consists not in working miracles, in curing the sick, expelling devils, or raising
- ↑ Bonavent. Vit. Francis, c. 8.— Lib. Conformitatum Lib. i. Fruct. 1, fol. 13a;
Lib. III. Fruct. 3, fol. 210a. — Thomae de Eccleston de Adventu Minorum Collat.
xn. — Alex. PP. IV. Bull. Quia longum ann. 1259 — Wadding, ann. 1256, No. 19.— Mag. Bull. Roman. I. 79, 108.— Potthast Regesta No. 10308.— See also Mr. J. S. Brewer's eloquent tribute to the Franciscans in his preface to the Monumenta Franciscana (M. R. Series).
In 1496 the University of Paris condemned as scandalous and savoring of heresy the attempts of the Franciscans to assimilate their patron to Christ. — (D'Argentrg, Coll. Judic. de nov. Error. L ii. 318.)
When the Dominicans claimed for St. Catharine of Siena the honor of the Stigmata, Sixtus IV., in 1475, issued a bull prohibiting her being represented with them, as they were reserved for St. Francis (Martene Ampliss. Collect. VI. 1386). They had not as yet been vulgarized by La Cadi^re and Louise Lateau,
