Forsyth, describing his visit to La Verna, Italy, p. 123, says: Francis appears to me a genuine hero, original, independent, magnanimous, incorruptible. His powers seemed designed to regenerate society; but, taking a wrong direction, they sank men into beggars."

Finally, the phrase he often uttered when others praised him may be here repeated, "What every one is in the eyes of God, that he is and no more."

51. Namely, in winter, when the sun is far south; or, as Biagioli prefers, glowing with unwonted splendor.

53. It will be noticed that there is a play of words on the name Ascesi (I ascended), which Padre Venturi irreverently calls a concetto di tre quattrini.

59. His vow of poverty, in opposition to the wishes of his father.

61. In the presence of his father and of the Bishop of the diocese.

65. After the death of Christ, she waited eleven hundred years and more till St. Francis came.

67. The story of Cæsar's waking the fisherman Amyclas to take him across the Adriatic is told by Lucan, Pharsalia, V. :

There through the gloom his searching eyes explored,
Where to the mouldering rock a bark was moored.

The mighty master of this little boat

Securely slept within a neighboring cot:
No massy beams support his humble hall,
But reeds and marshy rushes wove the wall;
Old, shattered planking for a roof was spread,
And covered in from rain the needy shed.
Thrice on the feeble door the warrior struck,
Beneath the blow the trembling dwelling shook.
"What wretch forlorn," the poor Amyclas cries,
"Driven by the raging seas, and stormy skies,
To my poor lowly roof for shelter flies?"

O happy poverty! thou greatest good,
Bestowed by Heaven, but seldom understood!
Here nor the cruel spoiler seeks his prey,
Nor ruthless armies take their dreadful way:

Security thy narrow limits keeps,

Safe are thy cottages, and sound thy sleeps.

Behold! ye dangerous dwellings of the great,

Where gods and godlike princes choose their seat;

See in what peace the poor Amyclas lies,

Nor starts, though Cæsar's call commands to rise.

Dante also writes, Convito, IV. 13: "And therefore the wise man says, that the traveller empty-handed on his way would sing in the very presence of robbers. And that is what Lucan refers to in his fifth book, when he commends the security of poverty, saying: O safe condition of poverty! O narrow habitations and hovels! O riches of the Gods not yet understood ! At what times and at what walls could it happen, the not being afraid of any noise, when the hand of Cæsar was knocking? And this says Lucan, when he describes how Cæsar came by night to the hut of the fisherman Amyclas, to pass the Adrian Sea.”

74. St. Francis, according to Butler, Lives of the Saints, X. 78, used to say that "he possessed nothing of earthly goods, being a disciple of Him who, for our sakes, was born a stranger in an open stable, lived without a place of his own wherein to lay his head, subsisting by the charity of good people, and died naked on a cross in the close em braces of holy poverty."

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79. Bernard of Quintavalle, the first follower of St. Francis. Butler, Lives of the Saints, X. 75, says: Many began to admire the heroic and uniform virtue of this great servant of God, and some desired to be his companions and disciples. The first of these was Bernard of Quintaval, a rich tradesman of Assisium, a person of singular prudence, and of great authority in that city, which had been long directed by his counsels. Seeing the extraordinary conduct of St. Francis, he invited him to sup at his house, and had a good bed made ready for him near his own. When Bernard seemed to be fallen asleep, the servant of God arose, and falling on his knees, with his eyes lifted up, and his arms across, repeated very slow, with abundance of tears, the whole night, Deus meus et Omnia, 'My God and my All.' . . . Bernard secretly watched the saint all night, by the light of a lamp, saying to himself, This man is truly a servant of God'; and admiring the happiness of such a one, whose heart is entirely filled with God, and to whom the whole world is nothing. After many other proofs of the sincere

6

and admirable sanctity of Francis, being charmed and vanquished by his example, he begged the saint to make him his companion. Francis recommended the matter to God for some time; they both heard mass together, and took advice that they might learn the will of God. The design being approved, Bernard sold all his effects, and divided the sum among the poor in one day."

83. Giles, or Egidius, the second follower of St. Francis, died at Perugia, in 1272. He was the author of a book called Verba Aurea, Golden Words. Butler, Lives of the Saints, VII. 162, note, says of him : "None among the first disciples of St. Francis seems to have been more perfectly replenished with his spirit of perfect charity, humility, meekness, and simplicity, as appears from the golden maxims and lessons of piety which he gave to others."

He gives also this anecdote of him on p. 164: "Brother Giles said, 'Can a dull idiot love God as perfectly as a great scholar?' St. Bonaventure replied, 'A poor old woman may love him more than the most learned master and doctor in theology.' At this Brother Giles, in a sudden fervor and jubilation of spirit, went into a garden, and, standing at a gate toward the city (of Rome), he looked that way, and cried out with a loud voice, 'Come, the poorest, most simple, and most illiterate old woman, love the Lord our God, and you may attain to an higher degree of eminence and happiness than Brother Bonaventure with all his learning.' After this he fell into an ecstasy, in which he continued in sweet contemplation without motion for the space of three hours."

Sylvester, the third disciple, was a priest who sold stone to St. Francis for the repairs of the church of St. Damiano. Some question arising about the payment, St. Francis thrust his hand into Bernard's bosom and drew forth a handful of gold, which he added to the previous payment. Sylvester, smitten with remorse that he, an old man, should be so greedy of gold, while a young man despised it for the love of God, soon after became a disciple of the saint.

87. The humble halter, l'umile capestro; the symbol of the Order of St. Francis, who called his body "Brother

9. The permission so found the Order of Minor Friars, or i zaceans, granted by Pipe Innocent II, a 1:14, was conted by Pope Homes I = 193

99. The tie of Arhimandrie, e FizÀ, Vas given in the Greek Church to one who had supervisKd over many

161. Namely, before the Sultan of Egypt in his camp near Lamenta

104. In the words of Ben Jonson,

Potential merit stands for actual

Where my opportunity dith wait,
It war power.

106. On Mount Alvernia, St. Francis, absorbed in prayer, received in his hands and feet and breast the stigmata of Christ, that is, the wounds of the nails and the spear of the crucifixion, the final seal of the Order.

Forsyth, Italy, p. 122: "This singular convent, which stands on the cliffs of a lofty Apennine, was built by St. Francis himself, and is celebrated for the miracle which the motto records. Here reigns all the terrible of nature,—a rocky mountain, a ruin of the elements, broken, sawn, and piled in sublime confusion, precipices crowned with old, gloomy, visionary woods, - black chasms in the rock where curiosity shudders to look down, — haunted caverns, sanctified by miraculous crosses, — long excavated stairs that restore you to daylight. . . On entering the Chapel of the Stigmata, we caught the religion of the place; we knelt

round the rail, and gazed with a kind of local devotion at the holy spot where St. Francis received the five wounds of Christ. The whole hill is legendary ground. Here the Seraphic Father was saluted by two crows which still haunt the convent; there the Devil hurled him down a precipice, yet was not permitted to bruise a bone of him."

117. When St. Francis was dying, he desired to be buried among the malefactors at the place of execution, called the Colle d' Inferno, or Hill of Hell. A church was afterwards built on this spot; its name was changed to Colle di Paradiso, and the body of the saint transferred thither in 1230. The popular tradition is, that it is standing upright under the principal altar of the chapel devoted to the saint.

118. If St. Francis were as here described, what must his companion, St. Dominic, have been, who was Patriarch, or founder, of the Order to which Thomas Aquinas belonged. To the degeneracy of this Order the remainder of the canto is devoted.

137. The Order of the Dominicans diminished in numbers, by its members going in search of prelacies and other ecclesiastical offices, till it is like a tree hacked and hewn.

138. Buti interprets this passage differently. He says: "Vedrai 'l corregger; that is, thou, Dante, shalt see St. Dominic, whom he calls corregger, because he wore about his waist the correggia, or leathern thong, and made his friars wear it, as St. Francis made his wear the cord; che argo

menta, that is, who proves by true arguments in his constitutions, that his friars ought to study sacred theology, studying which their souls will grow fat with a good fatness; that is, with the grace of God, and the knowledge of things divine, if they do not go astray after the other sciences, which are vanity, and make the soul vain and proud."

CANTO XII.

1. The Heaven of the Sun continued. The praise of St. Dominic by St. Bonaventura, a Franciscan.

3. By this figure Dante indicates that the circle of spirits was revolving horizontally, and not vertically. In the Con