St Francis | Page 9

its salvation; if God could not save it,
certainly the gods could not. The early Church called the gods of
paganism devils; and the Early Church was perfectly right. Whatever
natural religion may have had to do with their beginnings, nothing but
fiends now inhabited those hollow shrines. Pan was nothing but panic.
Venus was nothing but venereal vice. I do not mean for a moment, of
course, that all the individual pagans were of this character even to the
end; but it was as individuals that they differed from it. Nothing
distinguishes paganism from Christianity so clearly as the fact that the
individual thing called philosophy had little or nothing to do with the

social thing called religion. Anyhow it was no good to preach natural
religion to people to whom nature had grown as unnatural as any
religion. They knew much better than we do what was the matter with
them and what sort of demons at once tempted and tormented them;
and they wrote across that great space of history the text; "This sort
goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."
Now the historical importance of St. Francis and the transition from the
twelfth to the thirteenth centuries, lies in the fact that they marked the
end of this expiation. Men at the close of the dark Ages may have been
rude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen
tribes, more barbarous than themselves, but they were clean. They were
like children; the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the clean
pleasure of children. We have to conceive them in Europe as a whole
living under little local governments, feudal in so far as they were a
survival of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and carrying
a far more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial as far as
Rome still ruled as a great legend. But in Italy something had survived
more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity; the republic, Italy, was
dotted with little states, largely democratic in their ideals, and often
filled with real citizens. But the city no longer lay open as under the
Roman peace, but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war
and all the citizens had to be soldiers. One of these stood in a steep and
striking position on the wooded hills of Umbria; and its name was
Assisi. Out of its deep gate under its high turrets was to come the
message that was the gospel of the hour, "Your warfare is
accomplished, your iniquity is pardoned." But it was out of all these
fragmentary things of feudalism and freedom and remains of Roman
Law that there were to rise, at the beginning of the thirteenth century,
vast and almost universal, the mighty civilisation of the Middle Ages.
It is an exaggeration to attribute it entirely to the inspiration of any one
man, even the most original genius of the thirteenth century. Its
elementary ethics of fraternity and fair play had never been entirely
extinct and Christendom had never been anything less than Christian.
The great truisms about justice and pity can be found in the rudest
monastic records of the barbaric transition or the stiffest maxims of the

Byzantine decline. And early in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a
larger moral movement had clearly begun. but what may fairly be said
of it is this, that over all those first movements there was still
something of that ancient austerity that came from the long penitentiary
period. it was the twilight of the morning; but it was still a grey twilight.
This may be illustrated by the mere mention of two or three of these
reforms before the Franciscan reform. The monastic institution itself, of
course, was far older than all these things; indeed it was undoubtedly
almost as old as Christianity. Its counsels of perfection had always
taken the form of vows of chastity and poverty and obedience. With
these unworldly aims it had long ago civilised a great part of the world.
The monks had taught people to plough and sow as well as to read and
write; indeed they had taught the people nearly everything the people
knew. But it may truly be said that the monks were severely practical,
in the sense that they not only practical but also severe; though they
were generally severe with themselves and practical for other people.
All this early monastic movement had long ago settled down and
doubtless often deteriorated; but when we come to the first medieval
movements this sterner character is still apparent. Three examples may
be taken to illustrate the point.
First, the ancient social mould of slavery was already beginning to melt.
Not only was the slave turning into a serf, who was practically