St. Francis of AssisiChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
St. Francis of Assisi
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Francis, of Assisi, Saint, 1182-1226
Before resuming the narrative of his first adventures, and the building
of the great brotherhood which was the beginning of so merciful a
revolution, I think it well to complete this imperfect personal portrait
here; and having attempted in the last chapter a tentative description
of the process, to add in this chapter a few touches to describe the
result. I mean by the result the real man as he was after his first
formative experiences; the man whom men met walking about on the Italian
roads in his brown tunic tied with a rope. For that man, saving the
grace of God, is the explanation of all that followed; men acted quite
differently according to whether they had met him or not. If we see
afterwards a vast tumult, an appeal to the Pope, mobs of men in brown
habits besieging the seats of authority, Papal pronouncements, heretical
sessions, trial and triumphant survival, the world full of a new
movement, the friar a household word in every corner of Europe, and if we
ask _why_ all this happened, we can only approximate to any answer to
our own question if we can, in some faint and indirect imaginative
fashion, hear one human voice or see one human face under a hood. There
is no answer except that Francis Bernardone had happened; and we must
try in some sense to see what we should have seen if he had happened to
us. In other words, after some groping suggestions about his life from
the inside, we must again consider it from the outside; as if he were a
stranger coming up the road towards us, along the hills of Umbria,
between the olives or the vines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account