Ivan Gobry - Saint Francis of Assisi

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI

IVAN GOBRY

Translated by Michael J. Miller

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Original French edition:
Saint Franois dAssise
2003 Tallandier Editions, Paris

Cover art: Detail of Saint Francis (ca. 1320-1325)
from the fresco Saint Francis of Assisi
painted by Simone Martini
AKG Paris

Cover design by John Herreid

2006 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-58617-085-1
ISBN 1-58617-085-6
ISBN 978-1-68149-734-1 (EB)
Library of Congress Control Number 2005938827
Printed in the United States of America

PART ONE
THE LONG PATH OF CONVERSION

PART TWO
THE EXCITING PATH OF A FOUNDER

PART THREE
THE BITTER PATH OF FIDELITY

PART FOUR
THE PURE PATH OF THE SOULS JOURNEY TOWARD GOD

PART FIVE
THE SUBLIME PATH OF ETERNITY

PART SIX
THE PATHS BY WHICH SAINT FRANCIS IS KNOWN

Who, then, O greatest of the saints,
could imagine and explain to others the ardor of your soul ?

Thomas of Celano
(First biographer of Saint Francis)

Showered from his birth with favors from heaven,
filled with the spirit that inspired the prophets,
all aflame with the burning fire of the seraphim,
he is the one symbolized by the angel who rises
up from the East and bears the sign of the living God .

Saint Bonaventure
(Doctor of the Church)

In the twelfth century, love burst onto the scene with
extraordinary force, and Saint Francis was its champion .

Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine

By imitating Jesus Christ, Francis became
the most perfect copy and image of Our Lord that has ever existed .

Benedict XV

The French publishing house Tallandier asked me to write a new life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

My first reaction was to refuse. What good would a new biography do? In the French language alone, more than a hundred were published between 1800 and 1930. Everything has been said on the subject. And by what pens! I have in my hand the marvelous work by the Danish author, Johannes Jorgensen, which is just as charming and always a pleasure to reread. Could I ever expect to replace these masterpieces?

My editors insisted on a principle that they claimed was paramount: the more important a personage is, the more the public is disposed to read an account of his life. The reason that Saint Francis of Assisi has inspired more biographies than any other saint is that his fascinating personality continues to attract readers.

The argument was decisive, because it appealed to my deepest desires, and I was convinced, in my inmost heart, that Francis himself was urging me by the mouth of these editors. My familiarity with this spiritual genius and his religious family, with the historical sources of his life and his spirituality, persuaded me that I could undertake this task joyfully and diligently. He had been introduced to me when I was an adolescent by an unexpected middle-man: a Jesuit. It happened in Troyes in 1941, during the first year of the German occupation. I cared little about anything supernatural and had become passionately devoted to literature. I had read and reread, I dont know how many times, all the seventeenth-century classics, all the Romantic authors. I could recite, with feeling, whole acts from Phedre [a tragedy by Racine], entire poems from [Victor Hugos] Legende des siecles , but also cantos from the Divine Comedy and some sonnets by Petrarch. I sensed, however, a certain emptiness, which called for another form of enthusiasm and culture. One of my classmates encouraged me to meet with a religious from the Society of Jesus who was highly esteemed both as a confessor and as a retreat master: Father Butruyle. I went to see him, and I figured that there was every reason to begin with the master of that admirable man. I asked him to recommend for me a biography of Ignatius of Loyola.

He looked at me for a moment, as though he were trying to establish a connection between my soul and the souls of those who would inspire me in the future. Then he decided, with an impartiality that surprised me: Saint Ignatius? No. For you, Saint Francis of Assisi.

I did not try to argue: the man of God was ordering me to discover Saint Francis of Assisi. I went into the first bookstore along the way and bought the biography best suited to my wallet: Le saint des temps de misere, saint Franois dAssise , by Franois Duhourcau. I found this account dull and stereotyped. But, far from dissuading me from pursuing my quest, this disappointment drove me to find something better; I could sense, through those chapters that were devoid of enthusiasm, that elsewhere there was something to satisfy menot my curiosity, but my soul; not the discovery of historical facts, but a meeting with an ineffable being with whom I would communicate intimately. That was when I found Jorgensen; then, through him, the firsthand sources from the thirteenth century: Thomas of Celano, The Three Companions , the Legenda antiqua , the Mirror of Perfection , and the Fioretti [Little Flowers of Saint Francis ]. I had arrived: from then on, I enjoyed a close friendship with Saint Francis of Assisi. In 1943 I was admitted into the Third Order Franciscans.

And I plunged so easily and so joyfully into these accounts and these reflections, as an everyday routine, that the personalities of Francis of Assisi, of his disciples, and of his spiritual descendants became familiar to me, to the point that I rediscovered them at Assisi as though they were my contemporaries and friends. They belonged to my interior world, where Racine and Hugo had formerly been enthroned.

In 1956, Paul-Andre Lesort, aware of my research and my enthusiasm, asked me to compose a Saint Franois dAssise for [the publisher] Editions du Seuil,

Given that momentum, could I now refuse to write a biography of Saint Francis of Assisi for Editions Tallandier, which had just published five of my historical works? Of course, it would be more than a history. But is that not the case with every book on history, especially if it is hagiography? I had had some glorious predecessors, whom I could never hope to equal. The important thing was to forget them and to say again in turn, in my own way, what they had said so well; certainly not by improvising or by saying something else, but by following in their footsteps, along the same lines. By carrying the same flame, although it now lit a new torch.

The nineteenth-century historian Renan said one day to Rev. Paul Sabatier, a Protestant minister: You? You will be the historian of the Seraphic Father. I envy you. Saint Francis has always smiled upon his biographers. That, ultimately, is my ambition: to have Francis of Assisi smile at me.

Feeling quite unworthy and unequal to the task,
I would never have dared to write this life,
which deserves to be imitated in its entirety,
had I not been encouraged
by the affectionate fervor of my brothers
and constrained by the devotion
that binds me to my saintly father, Francis.
How could I escape?
I would sorely fear being accused of ingratitude
if I refused to bear witness in praise of him .

Saint Bonaventure

THE LONG PATH OF CONVERSION
11821209

Francis is from Assisi in Umbria. He was born in Assisi; he spent his youth in Assisi; he founded his religious order in Assisi; he died in Assisi.

An unimportant town, according to the geographer and the economist. The intellectual and commercial activities there are of little interest. Besides, it numbers now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, only twenty-five thousand inhabitants: What is that, compared with Milan and Naples? Furthermore, it was never the capital of a duchy or of a principality, and even today it is not a county seat.