The Coming of the Friars | Page 4

town of Assisi, thirteen miles from Perugia, who was
destined to be one of the great movers of the world. Giovanni
Bernardone was the son of a wealthy merchant at Assisi, and from all
that appears an only child. He was from infancy intended for a
mercantile career, nor does he seem to have felt any dislike to it. One
story--and it is as probable as the other--accounts for his name
Francesco by assuring us that he earned it by his unusual familiarity
with the French language, acquired during his residence in France
while managing his father's business. The new name clung to him; the

old baptismal name was dropped; posterity has almost forgotten that it
was ever imposed. From the mass of tradition and personal
recollections that have come down to us from so many different sources
it is not always easy to decide when we are dealing with pure invention
of pious fraud, and when with mere exaggeration of actual fact, but it
scarcely admits of doubt that the young merchant of Assisi was
engaged in trade and commerce till his twenty-fourth year, living in the
main as others live, but perhaps early conspicuous for aiming at a
loftier ideal than that of his everyday associates, and characterized by
the devout and ardent temperament essential to the religious reformer.
It was in the year 1206 that he became a changed man. He fell ill--he
lay at Death's door. From the languor and delirium he recovered but
slowly--when he did recover old things had passed away; behold! all
things had become new. From this time Giovanni Bernardone passes
out of sight, and from the ashes of a dead past, from the seed which has
withered that the new life might germinate and fructify, Francis--why
grudge to call him Saint Francis?--of Assisi rises.
Very early the young man had shown a taste for Church restoration.
The material fabric of the houses of God in the land could not but
exhibit the decay of living faith; the churches were falling into ruins.
The little chapel of St. Mary and the Angels at Assisi was in a
scandalous condition of decay. It troubled the heart of the young pietist
profoundly to see the Christian church squalid and tottering to its fall
while within sight of it was the Roman temple in which men had
worshipped the idols. There it stood, as it had stood for a thousand
years--as it stands to this day. Oh, shame! that Christian men should
build so slightly while the heathen built so strongly!
To the little squalid ruin St. Francis came time and again, and poured
out his heart, perplexed and sad; and there, we are told, God met him
and a voice said, "Go, and build my church again." It was a "thought
beyond his thought," and with the straightforward simplicity of his
nature he accepted the message in its literal sense and at once set about
obeying it as he understood it.
He began by giving all he could lay his hands on to provide funds for
the work. His own resources exhausted, he applied for contributions to
all who came in his way. His father became alarmed at his son's
excessive liberality and the consequences that might ensue from his

strange recklessness; it is even said that he turned him out of doors; it
seems that the commercial partnership was cancelled: it is certain that
the son was compelled to make some great renunciation of wealth, and
that his private means were seriously restricted. That a man of business
should be blind to the preciousness of money was a sufficient proof
then, as now, that he must be mad.
O ye wary men of the world, bristling with the shrewdest of maxims,
bursting with the lessons of experience, ye of the cool heads and the
cold grey eyes, ye whom the statesman loves, and the tradesman trusts,
cautious, sagacious, prudent; when the rumbling of the earthquake tells
us that the foundations of the earth are out of course, we must look for
deliverance to other than you! A grain of enthusiasm is of mightier
force than a million tons of wisdom such as yours; then when the hour
of the great upheaval has arrived, and things can no longer be kept
going!
"Build up my church!" said the voice again to this gushing emaciated
fanatic in the second-rate Italian town, this dismal bankrupt of
twenty-four years of age, "of lamentably low extraction," whom no
University claimed as her own, and whom the learned pundits pitied.
At last he understood the profounder meaning of the words. It was no
temple made with hands, but the living Church that needed raising. The
dust of corruption must be swept away, the dry bones be stirred; the
breath of the