CHAPTER V

FRANCISCAN MYSTICISM
ST. FRANCIS —THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS— JACOPONE DA TODI—ANGELA OF FOLIGNO
Wiru the career of St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) something new entered the spiritual life of the Church. He emerged from the “‘ rut of use and wont,” to make a fresh contact with reality ; and this contact took the form of a mysticism which was penitential, uncloistered, poetic and Christlike. Since in varying degrees and ways these qualities reappeared in the spiritual experience of his followers, enriching through them the Christian consciousness, Francis must rank with those crea- tive personalities to whom all the deepest develop- ments of this consciousness are due.
As St. Francis is of all the medieval saints the one who is most familiar and beloved, it is needless to tell again the story of his life. But regarded in its mystical aspect—that is, as an ever-deepening capacity for the experience of God—the emphasis of that life does not always fall upon the episodes for which he is now most commonly admired. He was, above all else, a spiritual realist, who wished his inward and his outward life to be at one: we shall never learn to know him by studying or admir- ing his outward actions, unless we perceive these
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as the expressions of an unwavering interior attitude. We may prefer to call him a “little brother of the birds,”’ forgetting that he was also a “little brother of the lice”; we shall only understand and correlate these facts when we remember that he first called himself and his companions the *“ penitents of Assisi.”” He accepted in the most practical sense the old ascetic prescription of an unmitigated meekness and an unlimited love, as the double foundations of all true relationship between created and uncreated Spirit. The story which represents him as repeating throughout a night of prayer the single awestruck aspiration : “My God! my God! what art Thou? and what am I ?”’, though its form may be legendary, fulfils the real office of legend in preserving a truth for which external history finds no room. It hints at the greatness and the depth of Francis’s soul, the humility and sense of mystery, the cease- less craving for the Infinite, which underlay his gaiety and charm ; and is a useful corrective to the more amiable and ordinary view of his char- acter as a “‘ Bridegroom of Lady Poverty”’ and *“* Troubadour of Christ.”
Again, the object of that external poverty on which he laid such stress was transcendental : for him it was a means, not the end it became for his more fanatical adherents. He is credited with calling it “‘ the heavenly virtue whereby all earthly things and fleeting are trodden under foot and all hindrances lifted from the soul, so that she may be free to unite herself to the Eternal God ” (Fioretti, cap. xiii)—thus emphasizing the true aim and interest of his life, and refusing to countenance
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anything that conflicted with it. In other words, he hated property, not because it was a source of sin, but because it split an attention which should be devoted to the one object of worship and love, and turned the relation of brotherhood within which all living things should adore their common Father into a relation of ownership. Many have seen this truth, at least intermittently ; the distinc- tion of St. Francis is that he insisted upon acting on it. Thus his great follower, Jacopone da Todi, condensed the Franciscan method and secret in a phrase when he wrote :
Povertate é nulla avere
e nulla cosa poi volere ;
ed omne cosa possedere
en spirito de libertate.
(Poverty is naught to have, and nothing to desire; and all things
to possess in the spirit of liberty.) (Lauda 60.)
From his conversion onwards, the whole outward career of Francis was a dramatic explication of this principle : and the result was a life, and relationship with Reality, quickly recognized by his followers as Christlike in a unique degree. A real return to the Gospels is always startling, whatever the circumstances in which it takes place. ‘The return made by St. Francis seemed to his contemporaries so amazing in its novelty, vigour and completeness, and in the transformation it effected, that he came to be regarded by his disciples and their immediate successors as, above all, the perfect imitator of Christ : one, indeed, in whom the actual earthly life of Jesus was reproduced. “‘ Christ hath shown Himself in thee!” said Jacopone da Todi with his usual boldness.
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More attractive is the form taken by this con- ception in the beautiful mind of Pier Pettignano (0b, 1289), that humble Franciscan contemplative whom all readers of Dante love. He saw in vision a superb procession of Apostles, Saints and Martyrs, with the Blessed Virgin at their head ; all walking carefully and scrutinizing the ground with much earnestness, that they might tread as nearly as possible in the very footsteps of Christ. At the end of this pageant of the Church Triumphant came the little shabby figure of Francis, barefoot
and brown-robed ; and he alone was walking easily and steadily in the actual footprints of our Lord. Such tales as these show what the life and rule of Francis meant to those who were touched by his spirit; and give the starting-point of Francis- can mysticism, with its love of poverty and vivid Christocentric feeling,
The peculiar concentration on the Passion which unites all the Franciscan mystics, of course results from the episode of the Stigmata, which deeply impressed the medieval religious mind, Whatever be our opinion of this episode, it witnesses to the intense and mystical character of that inner life which St. Francis—like his Pattern—so well con- cealed from the outer world. As the Gospels tell almost nothing about the interior education that ended in Gethsemane ; so the gradual development of the spirit of Francis during the eighteen years of his religious life can only be judged by its culmina- tion on La Verna, when, for an instant, the body became completely docile to the longings and apprehensions of the soul. | ER ‘
All the great Franciscan mystics, differing widely
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in temperament from each other and from Francis himself, live under the spell of this event. It gives them the passionate enthusiasm for suffering on the one hand, the rapturous and almost lyrical joy in surrender on the other, with which they enriched the consciousness of the Church. This ecstasy of self-giving, this paradoxical union of painful and delighted love, is not, of course, chiefly to be sought within the respectable ranks of those ‘ conventual ” friars who learnt so soon to interpret the Rule of Poverty in accordance with comfort and common sense. It was preserved and handed on by the saintly brothers who kept intact the spirit of St. Francis ; men living chiefly in remote hermitages, where they observed the Primitive Rule in all its rigour and passed their time in prayer. We know that Brother Leo, the intimate friend of Francis, was living thus in his old age. So, too, were his friend Conrad of Offida (1241-1306), who had inherited the Franciscan power over animals, and into whom the very soul of the mystical Brother Giles was said to have passed ; and the holy ecstatic John of La Verna, whose “heart for full three years was kindled with the fire of Love Divine”’ so that “‘ his marvellous and celestial words changed the hearts of men.”’ John of La Verna was Jacopone da Todi’s friend and probable director in the spiritual life, and it is likely enough that his beautiful spirit inspired some at least of his pupil’s poems. Besides these, we may be sure that a number of inarticulate mystics were among those friars of the Spiritual Party in whom it was said that “ Christ and His Spirit were most firmly believed to dwell.” 94
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These humble servants of the supernatural were known, revered, and visited in their retreats by all who valued the life of the Spirit; and thus pre- served and disseminated in its ardour and purity the inner character of Franciscan mysticism.
Second only to their influence was the part played by the Franciscan Tertiaries. These were men and women of all ranks, living in the world, who were drawn by the unmatched attraction of the Franciscan appeal and demand to accept such a modified rule of simplicity and devotion as was consistent with ordinary life ; and formed a loosely- knit society devoted to spiritual religion. It was within this society thatthe great Franciscan mystics —Pier Pettignano, Jacopone da Todi, Angela of Foligno, and Ubertino da Casale—developed : and we misunderstand their position if we look at them in isolation, forgetting their dependence on environment. When Jacopone wrote his spiritual songs there were already in the chief Italian cities sympathetic groups waiting to receive and sing them. It was to members of such groups that Angela of Foligno addressed her Justructions. ‘The lofty nature of the doctrine contained in her letters and exhortations to her “‘ spiritual sons ”’ shows their degree of spiritual understanding ; and suggests that Ubertino da Casale had more than their voluntary poverty in mind when he called these Tertiaries ‘‘ great practisers of seraphic wisdom.” From two of them, an unknown mystic called Cecilia of Florence and the holy Pier Pettignano of Siena, he says that he first learnt “the whole art of the higher contemplation of the Life of Christ”? ; and that “it would be a wondrous
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thing if the clearness of their spirit could be set down in words.’”’ Putting such a statement beside the poems of Jacopone, we begin to realize the existence in the thirteenth-century Italy of a wide- spread society of Franciscan mystics, not only rapt contemplatives, but also eager missionaries and teachers ; persons whose enthusiasm and love “set other loving spirits on fire.’ Those whom we know were nearly always, like Francis, ‘“ twice- born”’ souls : vigorous men and women, full of passionate feeling or ambition, captured, converted, and turning all their energy towards spiritual aims. Thus Jacopone da Todi was an ambitious lawyer who was converted in middle life, according to the legend, by a crushing sorrow. It is said that the sudden death of his beautiful young wife, and the discovery that under her lovely clothes she wore the hair shirt of the penitent, drove him to embrace Franciscan poverty and abjection in its most drastic sense. He became in turn a wandering missionary, a poet, a leader among the Spiritual Franciscans, and finally a great contemplative. His poems, revealing his passage through all the phases of penitence, rapture, desolation and peaceful assur- ance which mark mystical growth are the perfect literary monument of Franciscan spirituality ; its intensity of emotion, its religious realism, its para- doxical combination of austere penitence and gentle sweetness, its sudden flights into the unseen.
’Nante che el provasse, demandava
amare Cristo, credendo dolzura ;
en pace de dolceza star pensava,
for d’ogni pena possedendo altura ;
pruovo tormento qual non me cuitava, che’l cor se me fendesse per calura ;
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non posso dar figura de que veggio sembianza, che moio en delettanza € vivo senza core. * * ie *
Gia non posso vedere creatura,
al Creatore grida tutta mente ; cielo né terra non me da dolzura, per Cristo amore tutto m’é fetente ; luce de sole si me pare oscura, vedendo quella faccia resplendente, cherubin son niente,
belli per ensegnare,
serafin per amare,
chi vede lo Signore.
Before I knew its power, I asked in prayer For love of Christ, believing it was sweet ; I thought to breathe a calm and tranquil air, On peaceful heights where tempests never beat. Torment I find instead of sweetness there. My heart is riven by the dreadful heat ; Of these strange things to treat All words are vain ; By bliss I am slain, And yet I live and move. % * * *
Now on no creature can I turn my sight; But on my Maker all my mind is set. Earth, sea, and sky are emptied of delight, For Christ’s dear love all else I clean forget : All else seems vile, day seems as dark as night ; Cherubim, seraphim, in whom are met Wisdom and Love, must yet Give place, give place, To that one Face To my dear Lord of Love, (Lauda 90.) !
t This and the following quotations from Jacopone are taken by kind permission from the translation of Mrs. Theodore Beck.
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In this magnificent poem, rising to an almost intolerable pitch of emotion, we see Franciscan enthusiasm at fever-heat; needing and receiving the stern reminder—placed by the poet on the lips of Christ, but really taken direct from St. Augus- tine—that all virtue consists in the right ordering
of love. Ordena questo amore, tu che m’ami, non é virtute senza ordene trovata, poiché trovare tanto tu m’abrami, ca mente con virtute é renovata a me amare, voglio che tu chiami la caritate qual sia ordenata.
Order this love, O thou who lovest Me, For without order virtue comes to naught ; And since thou seekest Me so ardently— That virtue may be ruler in thy thought And in thy love—summon that Charity
Whose fervours are by gentle order taught. (Lauda 90.)
But other, gentler, and indeed loftier moods are celebrated in Jacopone’s verse—verse which, with all its insistence on the merits of poverty and simplicity, its implied contempt for scholarship, clearly reveals the literary sources of all the poet’s most striking phrases and ideas. Whilst direct Franciscan influence accounts for the hymns to Holy Poverty and to St. Francis, the lovely Christ- mas carols, the poems on the Cross, others show considerable knowledge of mystical philosophy. St. Augustine and Dionysius the Areopagite were obviously familiar to him, and constantly furnish his most striking phrases ; and from these great — masters, with their Platonic outlook, he learnt to suggest, almost to describe, that ecstatic sense of
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the Being of God—that transcendental background to the soul’s life, and object of its adoration— which balances and enfolds all personal strivings
and desires. Se l’atto de la mente é tutto consopito, en Dio stando rapito, ch’en sé non se retrova, de sé reman perdente posto nello ’nfinito, ammira co c’é gito, non sa Como se mova. ‘Tutto sf se renova, tratto fuor de suo stato, en quello smesurato dove s’anega l’amore.
When the mind’s very being is gone,
Sunk in a conscious sleep,
In a rapture divine and deep,
Itself in the Godhead lost :
It is conquered, ravished, and won!
Set in Eternity’s sweep,
Gazing back on the steep, Knowing not how it was crossed — To anew world now it is tossed,
Drawn from its former state,
To another, measureless, great,
Where Love is drowned in the Sea.
(Lauda 91.)
This two-fold outlook towards both the personal- emotional and the impersonal-metaphysical experi- ence of God—a duality pushed by Jacopone to its extreme point—is found again in Angela of Foligno, his junior by about twenty years, and in many respects the most remarkable of the great Franciscan mystics. The redeeming character of Franciscan enthusiasm—its ability to change, brace,
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and expand the most unlikely spirits and impel them to exacting discipline and selfless work—are fully shown in her.
Angela is an admirable example of that which the Abbé Huvelin was accustomed to call a “ bit by bit spirituality.”’” Even allowing for the exag- geration of the penitent, she had clearly lived, until the beginning of middle age, a thoroughly worldly and even a sinful life; yet she became one of the great religious influences of her day, and was called, not without reason, a ‘‘ Mistress in Theo- logy.” Her best known disciple, Ubertino da Casale, has left an impressive picture of her spiritual power ; and that which he experienced we may be sure that many others experienced too.
Ubertino was a vain, brilliant and self-indulgent young friar, whose first initiation into the spiritual life, at the hands of Cecilia of Florence and Pier Pettignano, had merely stimulated his religious imagination and stopped short of real self-renounce- ment. He preached brilliantly but lived com- fortably ; and his complete conversion was only effected when he came under the influence of Angela at about forty years of age, and received through her direction the strength of purpose he required. |
She restored, even a thousand-fold, all the gifts of my soul that I had lost through my sinfulness, so that from henceforth I was not the same man as before. When I had experienced the splendour of her ardent virtue, she changed the whole face of my mind; and so drove out weakness and languor from my soul and body, and renewed my mind that was torn asunder with distractions, that no one who had known me before could doubt that the spirit of Christ was begotten anew within me through her. (4réor Vite,
Prologue.) Too
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The woman of whom this was written, at that time about fifty years old, had passed through a long apprenticeship and much interior suffering before reaching the creative levels of spiritual life.
She had, like most of the great mystics, strong natural passions, and endured prolonged struggle in the course of their sublimation and dedication to spiritual ends. A married woman in prosperous circumstances, she loved human life, with its luxuries and comforts ; was sensual, self-indulgent, vacillating and insincere; and first combined full enjoyment of the world with the pretended practice of Franciscan austerity.
Being the while full of greediness, gluttony and drunkenness, I feigned to desire naught, save what was needful. I diligently made an outward show of being poor, but caused many sheets and coverings to be put where I lay down to sleep, and to be taken up in the morning so that none might see them. . . . I was given over to pride and the devil, but I feigned to have God in my soul and His consolation in my chamber, whereas I had the devil alike in my soul and my chamber. And know, that during the whole of my life, I have studied how I might obtain the fame of sanctity. (Book of Conversion, cap. i.)
This picture is not attractive ; seldom, indeed, has more unpromising material been used for the making of a saint.
Angela was probably at this time a nominal Franciscan Tertiary, evading the real obligations of the rule. Furthermore she had committed grave sins which she was afraid to confess, until, praying to St. Francis, he appeared to her in a dream, and promised her help. Going next day to the cathe- dral of Foligno, she saw in its pulpit her uncle
Arnaldo, a Franciscan friar, and recognizing in IOI
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him the promised helper, made her confession to him—thus taking the first of the “‘ spiritual steps ” by which she “‘ came to know the imperfections of her life,”’ and sought to correct them.
This process lasted for years. There were often long pauses before the next step was seen, the next renunciation faced. It began by a reduction in the comforts of life, ‘‘a shameful and a hard thing to do, seeing that I did not feel much love for God, and was living with my husband.” A more thoroughgoing asceticism became possible with Angela’s widowhood, especially as her children died about this time—perhaps of one of the epidemics which periodically swept the Umbrian towns—and also her mother, ‘‘a great hindrance to me in following the way of God.” Living with one companion as a Franciscan Tertiary, she now gradually gave up her possessions, the interior call to the complete practice of Franciscan poverty struggling with her natural fear of hardship. She undertook secret penances, and penetrated more deeply into the contemplative life.
She gives a very human account of her hesitation before this total and heroic renunciation of pro- perty. ‘‘I cherished,” she says, ‘‘in imagination a great desire to become poor, and such was my zeal that I often feared to die before attaining the state of poverty. On the other hand I was assailed by temptations, whispering that I was young, and that begging for alms might lead into great danger and shame ; and if I did it, I should be obliged to die in hunger, cold and nakedness. Moreover all my friends dissuaded me from it.” These prudent advisers seem even to have included the
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Franciscan friars from whom she sought counsel ; but an impulse stronger than all prudence warned her that no half-measures would suffice. ‘‘ Me- thought I could not keep anything for myself, without greatly offending Him who did thus enlighten me.”
It was when she decided upon full renunciation of property that Angela first knew the joys as well as the compulsions of the spiritual life. Hitherto she had been “‘ sunk in bitterness because of her sins, and feeling no divine sweetness whatsoever.” But after she had resolved on perfect poverty, she was given “‘so clear an understanding of the Divine goodness and mine own unworthiness that I could in no way describe it,’’ and from this time began to “feel the sweetness and consolation of God in her heart.”
The state of illumination was completed and her consecration assured by the most celebrated of her spiritual ‘‘revelations”’ ; the experience which befell her as she went on a pilgrimage from Foligno to Assisi. She tells us that a little time before, whilst she was still distributing the remainder of her property to the poor, she had said to God in prayer, ‘‘ Lord, that which I do, I do only that I may find Thee,” and it seemed to her that a voice replied, ‘‘ Strive diligently to make thyself ready, for when thou hast accomplished that which thou art now doing, the whole Trinity will descend unto thee.” The most ancient MS. of Angela’s revelations tells us that it was precisely when she came to the little chapel of the Holy Trinity, where the road from Spello turns towards Assisi, that she suddenly felt her soul inundated by the Presence
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of God, who spoke to her and “ persuaded her to love,” promising to remain with her till her second visit to the basilica of Assisi.
It is a mark of Angela’s strength of soul, that she did not accept even this overwhelming experi- ence without criticism. ‘‘ My soul said further : If Thou who hast spoken with me from the begin- ning wert truly the Holy Spirit, Thou wouldst not have told me such great things ; and if Thou wert verily within me, then my joy would be so great that I could not bear it and live.” The inner Presence replied: ‘I will give thee this sign, that thou mayest know who lam. Go now, and endeavour to speak with thy companions and think of anything thou willst, good or evil, and thou shalt see thou canst not think of aught save God ; for I am He who alone can bind the thoughts.”
The experience remained with her until the pilgrims paid their second visit to the basilica, and then “‘ departed with great gentleness ; not sud- denly, but slowly and gradually.”’ Nevertheless the sense of abandonment was so bitter that she fell upon the ground ; struggling to say ‘‘ Love ! love ! why do you leave me? Why? Why?” but able only to utter loud inarticulate cries. The friars ran to see the cause of this uproar, and among them Arnaldo, annoyed that his niece should create a disturbance. When they met next in Foligno, he examined her as to the cause of her seizure ; and under pressure she revealed the unsuspected facts of her mystical life, and the height of contemplative experience which—appar- ently without formal training of any kind—she had
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achieved. Arnaldo wrote at her dictation the unequalled series of ‘‘ intellectual visions’? which give her a special place among the mystics of the Church. Their association lasted from the time of the pilgrimage to Assisi until some date subse- quent to1296. We possess the results of Arnaldo’s efforts, edited and rearranged by a later hand ; and though Angela frequently complained of their inadequacy, insisting that his words were “‘ dry and savourless’”’ and hardly suggested the ineffable truths which were revealed to her, this record remains one of the greatest monuments of Christian mysticism.
The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld the plenitude of God, whereby I did comprehend the whole world, both here and beyond the sea, and the abyss and all things else ; and therein did I behold naught save the divine power in a manner assuredly in- describable, so that through excess of marvelling the soul cried with a loud voice, saying, “‘ This whole world is full of God!” Wherefore did I now comprehend that the world is but a small thing; I saw, moreover, that the power of God was above all things, and that the whole world was filled with it.
Then said He unto me, ‘“‘ I have shown thee something of My power,” the which I did so well understand that it enabled me better to understand all other things. He said also, ‘‘ I have made thee to see something of My power; behold now and see My humility.” ‘Then was I given so deep an insight into the humility of God towards man and all other things, that when my soul remem- bered His unspeakable power and comprehended His deep humility, it marvelled greatly and did esteem itself to be nothing at all, for in itself it beheld nothing save pride.
Even in the fragmentary form in which we possess it, such a “‘ vision”’ as this, half-metaphysical and half-personal, in which “‘ the soul beholds a spiritual and not a bodily presence,”’ helps us to understand
how Angela came to be called a “ Mistress in 105
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Theology ”—one who saw deeply into the mysteries of the supernatural world. In them, as in some of the revelations of Julian of Norwich, a direct and supra-rational intuition seems to fuse with the brooding thought of an intensely religious mind. These visions began early and seem to have charac- terized her first or ecstatic period of development, which ended in 1294, ‘‘ the year of the pontificate of Celestino’’—one of few fixed dates which we possess for her life. ‘They probably correspond with the spiritual stages she calls “‘ unction, instruc- tion, reformation and union.”
She was now living in great retirement, her mystical experiences unknown except to her com- panion and her director, as St. Teresa lived during the first or ecstatic period of her spiritual life. This phase of development, in which she says that _ sometimes she was so inundated with spiritual joy that her “‘ face was shining and rosy, and her eyes shone like candles,” closed in 1294, when she entered the ‘‘ degree of torments”; that state of misery which so often precedes the creative stage of the mystic way. Its afflictions lasted for over two years, the trials through which she passed leaving her body ‘‘ weak, feeble, and full of pain.” Violent temptations tested and braced her will. Of the final stages of purification she says : ‘‘ Every vice was reawakened within me... at times, I was thrown into a most horrible darkness of spirit. . . » Methought I would have chosen rather to be roasted than to endure such pains.” ‘Those who find in such confessions evidence of a morbid and unbalanced mind must remember that this
drastic education formed no mere hysterical vision- 106
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ary, but the woman of genius round whom there presently gathered a devoted band of disciples, whose “ Evangelical Doctrine” taught many of the saints, whose meditations on the Divine Attri- butes still command our astonished respect, and whose “‘ ardent virtue ” changed the whole spiritual outlook of Ubertino da Casale and shamed him into complete self-consecration. When he visited her in 1298, the converted worldling and secret visionary had become so great a centre of spiritual influence that Ubertino was not afraid to call her, in the words of Ecclesiasticus, ‘‘ the Mother of fair love and fear and knowledge and holy hope.” The degree of “‘ torment’ was passed, and suc- ceeded by that active yet peaceful abiding in God which she calls “‘ineffable’’ and other mystics name the “unitive life.’ During this apostolic period most of her recorded visions concern the “spiritual sons’ who had now become her main interest. The little book of “‘ Evangelical Doctrine,”’ which shows her to us as a teacher and director of souls, appears to be made of letters and dis- courses addressed to them in the last ten or twelve years of her life; and represents far better than ‘‘ visions,” ‘‘ consolations,” or ‘‘ elevations ” can do the proper fruits of spiritual maturity. Here we see her in her creative aspect, as a sober instructress in the plain ways which lead to perfection.
For Angela, the beginning and end of true wisdom was ‘“‘to know God and ourselves ’—a level of reality which few human beings achieve. ** Oh, my beloved sons ! every vision, every reve- lation, all sweetness and emotion, all knowledge,
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all contemplation, availeth nothing if a man know not God and himself !”’ This realistic knowledge, this sense of spiritual proportion, depends on the soul’s humility and poverty. In true Franciscan fashion, she identifies this lowliness and emptiness of spirit with that literal imitation of the earthly life of Christ to which every awakened soul is bound. ‘‘ The love of God,” she observes in a celebrated passage, ‘‘is never idle, for it con- strains us to follow the way of the Cross!” ‘This active love is awakened by an attention to God “constant, assiduous, devout, and ardent ’’—a string of adjectives which suggests the complete- ness of spiritual life she required of her “ sons.” It means long and serious training in character- building, prayer and contemplation ; not an emo- tional piety of the revivalistic type. ‘This training assumes both the existence and the attainableness of supernatural truth. ‘“‘ The first step to be taken by the soul who enters upon this strait way, and desires to draw near to God, is to learn to know God in very truth, and not only outwardly as though by the colour of the writing. For as we know, so do we love; therefore if we know but little and darkly, if we reflect and meditate on Him only superficially and fleetingly, we shall in conse- quence love Him but little.” Real love is to be directed with discretion, and shown in the acceptance of hardship and contempt, the practice of humility, gentleness, and steadfastness—a catalogue of virtues which perhaps reflects the course followed by Angela’s own interior transformation. And the end of this hard process is declared to be the reve-
lation that ‘‘ a7 goodness cometh from the Love 108
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Uncreate, and not from ourselves—whosoever feeleth this hath the Spirit of Truth |”
“Thou,” said Jacopone da Todi more tersely, “art the Love wherewith the heart loves Thee.” In these two sayings, so deceptive in their simplicity, so infinite in their scope, we reach the heart of Franciscan mysticism.
ILLUSTRATIVE WORKS
Angela of Foligno. Book of Divine Consolations. (New Medizval Library.) London, 1908.
Cuthbert, Fr. Life of St. Francis of Assisi. London, 1914.
Dante. Divine Comedy: Text and Translation. 3 vols. (Temple Classics.) London, 1900.
Gardner, Edmund. Dante and the Mystics. London,
1913.
Gebhart, E. Mysticsand Hereticsin Italy. London, 1922.
Facopone da Todi. Le Laude. A Cura di G. Ferri. Bari. Ig15.
Little Flowers of St. Francis. Translated by T. W. Arnold. London, 1903.
Mirror of Perfection. ‘Translated by R. Steele. London, 1903
Sacrum Commercium: ‘The Converse of Francis and his Sons with Holy Poverty. London, 1904.
Thomas of Celano. ‘The Lives of St. Francis of Assisi. Translated by A. G. Ferrers Howell. London, 1908.
Underhill, E. Jacopone da Todi: A Spiritual Biography : with a selection from the Spiritual Songs translated
by Mrs, Theodore Beck. London, 1919.
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