The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of AssisiChalippe, Candide
Religion
The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi
Chalippe, Candide
Francis, of Assisi, Saint, 1182-1226; Miracles -- Early works to 1800
St. Francis, moreover, strenuously recommends to the brethren and
sisters, to avoid all words tending to swearing or imprecation, the
theatre, dancing, and all profane meetings; to undertake no law-suits,
and to live in fraternal union; to take great care of the sick of the
Order, to bury the dead, and to pray for them.
He adds to this, an article which is deserving of peculiar notice; it
is, that all persons who enter the Order and have property over which
they have the disposal, shall make their wills within a few months
after their profession, lest they should die intestate. We see that
his intention was to make them think on death, and to have their minds
free for meditating on the important affair of their salvation, and
to prevent those dissentions which frequently occur after the death
of such as have not regulated their temporal affairs, before being
called away. Wills which are made during a last illness are frequently
exposed to deceit and fraud. They are never better made than when
executed while the testator is in good health, in possession of all
his faculties.
By the institution of the Third Order, Francis proposes to himself to
reanimate the fervor of the faithful, to induce all the world, those
in orders, laics, married persons of either sex, and such as were
living in a state of celibacy, to a stricter observance of God's
commandments, to live a more Christian and Catholic life, and to add
the practice of virtues to the duties of civil life. His views met
with astonishing success; the Order was established, and spread with
the greatest rapidity through all conditions of life. Cardinals,
bishops, emperors, empresses, kings, queens, considered themselves
honored in being admitted into it, and it has given to the Church an
infinite number of saints and blessed of either sex, who are publicly
revered with her sanction. Wading says, that in his day, (that is in
1623,) there were at the court of Madrid more than sixty lords who
belonged to the Third Order; and Cardinal Trejo, who had joined it,
wrote to him in these terms on the subject of the works of St. Francis,
which that author was about to give to the public with learned notes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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