humility and his austerities. He sewed his rough habit with pack-thread to make it rougher; he slept on the ground with a stone for his pillow; he drank water; he ate bread; he fasted eight lents in the year; he called his body "Brother Ass," and bound it with a halter, the cord of his Order; but a few days before his death he begged pardon of his body for having treated it so harshly. As a penance, he rolled himself naked in the snow and among brambles; he commanded his friars to revile him, and when he said, "O Brother Francis, for thy sins thou hast deserved to be plunged into hell;' Brother Leo was to answer, "It is true; thou hast deserved to be buried in the very bottom of hell."

In 1215 his convent was removed to Alvernia, among the solitudes of the Apennines. In 1219 he went to Egypt to convert the Sultan, and preached to him in his camp near Damietta, but without the desired effect. He returned to the duties of his convent with unabated zeal; and was sometimes seen by his followers lifted from the ground by the fervour of his prayers; and here he received in a vision of the Crucifixion the stigmata in his hands and feet and side. Butler, Lives of the Saints, X. 100, says: "The marks of nails began to appear on his hands and feet, resembling those he had seen in the vision of the man crucified. His hands and feet seemed bored through in the middle with four wounds, and these holes appeared to be pierced with nails of hard flesh; the heads were round and black, and were seen in the palms of his hands, and in his feet in the upper part of the instep. The points were long, and appeared beyond the skin on the other side, and were turned back as. if they had been clenched with a hammer. There was also in his right side a red wound, as if made by the piercing of a lance; and this often threw out blood, which stained the tunic and drawers of the saint."

Two years afterwards St. Francis died, exclaiming, "Welcome, Sister Death;" and multitudes came to kiss

In the life of St. Francis it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the facts of history and the myths of tradition; but through all we see the outlines of a gentle, beautiful, and noble character. All living creatures were his brothers and sisters. To him the lark was an emblem of the Cherubim, and the lamb an image of the Lamb of God. He is said to have preached to the birds; and his sermon was, 'Brother birds, greatly are ye bound to praise the Creator, who clotheth you with feathers, and giveth you wings to fly with, and a purer air to breathe, and who careth for you, who have so little care for yourselves."

66

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 splendour.

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 Caesar'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

mocred..

The mighty master of this little boat Securely slept within a neighbouring 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 embraces of holy poverty."

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 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, appears from the golden maxims and lessons of piety which he gave to others."

as

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 fervour 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

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 ele ments, 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,

89. Peter Bernadone, the father of St. Francis, was a wool-merchant. Of this humble origin the saint was not ashamed.

93. The permission to establish his religious Order, granted by Pope Innocent III., in 1214.

96. Better here in heaven by the Angels, than on earth by Franciscan friars in their churches, as the custom was. Or perhaps, as Buti interprets it, better above in the glory of Paradise, "where is the College of all the Saints," than here in the Sun.

98. The permission to found the Order of Minor Friars, or Franciscans, granted by Pope Innocent III., in 1214, was confirmed by Pope Honorius III., in 1223.

99. The title of Archimandrite, or Patriarch, was given in the Greek Church to one who had supervision over many convents.

101. Namely, before the Sultan of Egypt in his camp near Damietta.

104. In the words of Ben Jonson,

"Potential merit stands for actual,

Where only opportunity doth want,
Not will nor 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 sin

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 po pular 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 argomenta, 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.

I. 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 Convito, III. 5, he makes the same comparison in speaking of the apparent motion of the sun; non a modo di mola, ma di rota, not in fashion of a millstone, but of a wheel.

II. Ezekiel i. 28: "As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about.' 12. Iris, Juno's messenger. 14. Echo. dison's Tr. :

55. St. Dominic.

“The Nymph, when nothing could Narcissus

move,

Still dashed with blushes for her slighted love,
Lived in the shady covert of the woods,
In solitary caves and dark abodes;
Where pining wandered the rejected fair,
Till harassed out, and worn away with care,
The sounding skeleton, of blood bereft,
Besides her bones and voice had nothing left.
Her bones are petrified, her voice is found
In vaults, where still it doubles every sound."

16. Genesis ix. 13: "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth."

And Campbell, To the Rainbow:

"When o'er the green undeluged earth
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine,
How came the grey old fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign."

:

31. It is the spirit of St. Bonaventura, a Franciscan, that speaks.

32. St. Dominic, by whom, through the mouth of his follower, St. Francis has been eulogized.

symbols of the black and white habit of founder. In art the dog has become the the Order, and of the fiery zeal of its attribute of St. Dominic, as may be seen in many paintings, and in the statue over the portal of the convent of St. Mark at Florence.

64. The godmother of St. Dominic dreamed that he had a star on the forehead, and another on the back of his head, which illuminated the east and the west.

69. Dominicus, from Dominus, the

under the Bishop of Osma, preaching in the various churches of the province for nine years, and at times teaching theology at Palencia. In 1203 he accompanied his Bishop on a diplomatic mission to Denmark; and on his return stopped in Languedoc, to help root out the Albigensian heresy; but how far he authorized or justified the religious crusades against these persecuted people, and what part he took in them, is a contested point,-enough it would seem to obtain for him, from the Inquisition of Toulouse, the title of the Persecutor of Heretics.

In 1215, St. Dominic founded the Order of Preaching Friars, and in the year following was made Master of the Sacred Palace at Rome. In 1219 the centre of the Order was established at Bologna, and there, in 1221, St. Dominic died, and was buried in the Church of St. Nicholas.

It has been generally supposed that St. Dominic founded the Inquisition. It would appear, however, that the special guardianship of that institution was not intrusted to the Dominicans till the year 1233, or twelve years after the death of their founder.

75. Matthew xix. 21: "Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven and come and follow me.

While still a young man and a student, in a season of great want, St. Dominic sold his books, and all that he possessed, to feed the poor.

79. Felix signifying happy, and Joanna, full of grace.

83. Henry of Susa, Cardinal, and Bishop of Ostia, and thence called Ostiense. He lived in the thirteenth century, and wrote a commentary on the Decretals or Books of Ecclesiastical Law.

Taddeo Alderotti was a distinguished physician and Professor of Bologna, who flourished in the thirteenth century, and translated the Ethics of Aristotle. Villani, VIII. 66, says of him: "At this time (1303) died in Bologna Maestro Taddeo, surnamed the Bolognese,

The allusion here is to the pursuit of worldly things, instead of divine, the same as in the introduction to Canto XI. :—

"One after laws and one to aphorisms."

88. Buti says that in early times th prelates used to divide the incomes of the Church into four parts; "the first, for the prelate personally; the second, for the clergy who performed the services; the third, for the embellishment of the Church; the fourth, for Christ's poor; which division is now-a-days little observed."

90. Pope Boniface VIII., whom Dante never forgets, and to whom he never fails to deal a blow.

91. He did not ask of the Holy See the power of grasping six, and giving but two or three to pious uses; not the first vacant benefice; nor the tithes that belonged to God's poor; but the right to defend the faith, of which the fourand-twenty spirits in the two circles around them were the seed.

106. One wheel of the chariot of the Church Militant, of which St. Francis was the other.

112. The track made by this wheel of the chariot; that is, the strict rule of St. Francis, is now abandoned by his followers.

114. Good wine produces crust in the cask, bad wine mould.

117. Set the points of their feet upon the heel of the footprints, showing that they walked in a direction directly opposite to that of their founder.

120. When they find themselves in Hell, and not in Paradise. Matthew xiii. 30: "Let both grow together until the harvest and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn."

121. Whoever examines one by one the members of our Order, as he would turn over a book leaf by leaf, will find some as good and faithful as the first.

124. In 1287, Matteo d' Acquasparta, general of the Franciscans, relaxed the