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Grapes Of Wrath

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.
Rome, and written in the catalogue of the Saints. Nor may any man
be portrayed anywhere as a Saint except his canonization be first
published by the Church. Wherefore the Bishops who suffered such
abuses to be done in their dioceses or under their rule would
deserve to be removed from their bishoprics, and wholly deprived of
their dignity. Yet he who was absent * Vini portator simul et potator
nee non et pcccator.
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286 From St. Francis to Dante. from this solemnity was held
for a heretic, and envious ; and the seculars would say loudly and
audibly to the Friars Minor and Preachers ' Ye think that none can do
miracles except your own Saints : but ye are much deceived, as may
be seen now in this man.' But God swiftly purged this reproach from
His servants and friends by showing forth the lying men who had
espoused them, and punishing those who laid a blot on the elect.
For some came from Cremona claiming to have brought relics of this
Saint Alberto, namely, the little toe of his right foot ; so that all the
men of Parma were gathered together, from the least even unto the
greatest ; men and women, young men and maidens, old men and
youths, clerks and laymen, and all the men of Religion : and in
solemn procession, with many chants, they bore that toe to the
cathedral church, which is dedicated to the glorious Virgin. When
therefore the aforesaid toe had been laid on the high altar, there
came the Lord Anselmo di Sanvitale, canon of the cathedral church
and at one time vicar to the Bishop, and kissed the relic. Whereupon
becoming aware of a savour (or rather, a stench) of garlic, he made
it known to the other clergy, who themselves also saw that they
were both deceived and confounded ; for they found therein nought
but a clove of garlic. And so the men of Parma were despised and
mocked, for that they had walked ' after vanity, and become vain.'
Where fore the sinner or the sick man errs greatly who leaves
famous Saints, and turns to call on one who cannot be heard. Note
now and diligently consider that, as the men of Cremona and Parma
and Reggio wrought folly of late with their brentadore Alberto, even
so do the Paduans work folly with one Antonio a pilgrim, and the
men of Ferrara with a certain Armanno Punzilovo : but the Lord
came also truly in the blessed Francis and the blessed Anthony and
St. Dominic : and in their sons, in whom sinners should believe. Now
this devotion to the false Saint had its origin in many reasons :
among the sick, because they sought to be healed ; among the
curious, because they desired to see new things ; among the clergy,
on account of the envy which they have to modern men of Religion
(i.e. the new Orders of Friars) ; among the Bishops and Canons on
account of the gains thereby accruing to them, as is plain in the
matter of the Bishop of Ferrara and his canons, who gained much by
occasion of Armamio Punzilovo. Also [the devotion] grew among
those who, having been driven from their cities for their adherence
to the Emperor's party, hoped through these miracles of new saints
to make peace
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Faith. 287 with their fellow-citizens, whereby they might be

brought back into possession of their earthly goods, and no longer
wander homeless through the world." The contemporary author of
the Chronicon Parmense gives Alberto a better character, and seems
rather more inclined to believe in his miracles. He describes the
Piazza outside the church of St. Peter as encumbered with booths, in
which the sick lay ; and tells how a great part of the offerings to the
new saint were devoted to the building of a hospital. Of Armanno
Punzilovo we only know that, after he had been worshipped for 30
years, the inquisitors found him to have been a seducer and a
heretic : whereupon his corpse was torn from its shrine and burned.
A still stranger case of the same sort happened in these days at
Milan, though Salimbene does not mention it. A woman named
Guglielma passed during her lifetime for an Incarnation of the Holy
Ghost. She was worshipped for some years specially by people of
the wealthy class, under the direct patronage of the Cistercian
monks and without opposition from the Archbishop, until the matter
was taken up by the Inquisition. The reader may have been struck
by the serious failings which Salimbene attributes to these objects of
popular worship in his time ; but moral excellence, though
undoubtedly an advantage, was by no means a sine qua non in
these cases. One of the scandalous cases quoted by Guibert of
Nogent is that of an abbot whose claims to sanctity, under
investigation, reduced themselves to this : that he had fallen down a
well in a state of intoxication and so perished. Canoniza tion, again,
was one of the regular forms of popular protest in purely political
quarrels : there was a constant stream of pilgrims to the tombs of
Simon de Montfort, of King Henry VI, and even of the selfish and
despicable Thomas of Lancaster, who worked far more miracles than
many of his betters. While the soul of Martin IV was expiating in
Dante's purgatory those surfeits of Bolsena eels and Vernaccia wine,
his body was busily working miracles on earth. So also did the body
of Gregory IX, a far more remarkable Pope, though he was believed
by many to have had an illegitimate son, and certainly did more than
any other Pope of the 13th century to degrade the first Franciscan
ideal. The wine-bibbing wine-porter at Parma, and the Incarnation of
the Holy Ghost at Milan, were in the fresh bloom of their saintship
on the day on which Dante first spoke to Beatrice : and Sacchetti
shows us a similar picture after the poet's death. There was a strong
popular movement to canonize Urban IV.
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288 From St. Francis to Dante. Sacchetti, writing to a friend

in 1365, does not stick at calling it sheer idolatry. He complains that,
in the great Baptistery of Florence — Dante's bel San Giovanni — the
brand-new image of this unauthorized saintling, "had before it a
lighted wax torch of two pounds' weight, while the Crucifix hard by
had but a mean penny taper. ... If a man were new come into the
world, without knowledge of divine things, and if we told him ' One
of these two is the King of Everlasting Life ; ' then, considering the
painting and the light, he must needs have believed that Pope Urban
was He The cause of this is in the clergy, who consent to these
things in their avarice, to make men draw to them. . . . You tell me
how Marquis Ghino da Cittadella once said that these new-fangled
saints made him lose faith in the old. Are not this nobleman's words
indeed true ? and who is to assure us that there are not many
(assai) who surmise that other saints began in this fashion, first with
mere rays round their head and ' Beato ' on the label under their
feet ; until in process of time the rays have become a halo, and the
Beato a Saint ? How can we believe in our priests, when they raise
on high the bodies of these Beati, setting lights and waxen images
round them, while our Lord and the Virgin Mother are portrayed in
the gloom, almost on the level of the ground, and without a single
light ? . . . . The Friars Minor of Florence have the bodies of St.
Bartolommeo Pucci and St. Gerard of Villamagna and Santa Umiliana
de' Cerchi, who have passed from Beati to Saints ; and all are
honoured with many tapers, while our Lord and the Apostles, and
even St. Francis, have none. And the Friars Preachers have the
blessed Giovanna . . . and the blessed Villana, a girl who dwelt in
Florence, hard by mine own house, and who went about clothed like
other folk ; and now they make much of her, and St. Dominic stands
aside." So also with the other friars : brand-new saints have almost
driven St. Augustine and St. Benedict out of mind. As to the Santo
Volto of Lucca* no man knows its history, and the most miraculous
thing about it is its hideousness : two holy friars have preached
openly against its worship. Nor are the miracles less doubtful : a
blind friend of Sacchetti's pressed into the crowd to touch one of
these new saints, and came out as blind as he went, but with his
nose cleft almost in half : a peasant returning from the same saint
found that he had only lost his purse. "I have no space to tell how
wide this error is spread in * Cf. the demon's scoff in Inf. xxi. 48.
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Faith. 289 our days, solely because it brings grist to some

men's mills. And the Pope pays no attention : he has greater things
to do. ... How many changes have there been, in my city of Florence
alone, in the figure of our Lady ! There was a time when all flocked
to Santa Maria da Cigoli : then it was Santa Maria della Selva : then
grew up the fame of Santa Maria in Pruneta : then Santa Maria
Primeriana at Fiesole : then our Lady of Or San Michele : then all
these were left in the lurch, all flock now after La Nunziata de' Serri,
round whom so many images have been hung, one way or another,
that if the walls had not been bound with chains of late, they bade
fair to fall flat to the ground, roof and all. . . . And so our folk are
clear of sin, God knows how, as though our Lady had more might to
work graces in one place than in another ! " This then was what
men of learning and ability said to each other in 14th century
Florence. But in Salimbene's Lombardy of a century earlier it was
easier to keep some belief in these new saints — at any rate, in
those of one's own Order or party. Salimbene seems as naively
delighted as Charles of Anjou at the dis covery of a fresh body of "
the Magdalene, whole save for one leg " near Aix in Provence (1283
—291) " where I dwelt in the year when the King of France went on
his Crusade, for I was of the convent there. When this body was
found, her epitaph could scarce be read with a crystal glass, for the
antiquity of the writing. And it pleased King Charles that the body
should be displayed abroad and exalted and honoured, and that a
solemn feast should be made in her honour. And so it was :
wherefore the contentions and contradictions and cavils and abuses
and falsehoods which were of old concerning her body are
henceforth ended. For the men of Sinigaglia had formerly claimed to
possess it, and the men of Vezelay had it likewise, as they said, and
had even a legend thereof : but it is manifest that the body of the
same woman cannot be in three places. (For this same cause there
is a bitter quarrel at Ravenna concerning the body of St. Apollinare,
for the men of Chiassi, which was once a city, say that they possess
it : and the citizens of Ravenna claim to possess it too.) Now the
Magdalene's cave, wherein she did penitence thirty years, is five
miles distant from Marseilles, and I slept there one night
immediately after her feast. It is in a high rocky mountain, and great
enough, if I remember well, to contain a thousand men. There are
three altars and a dropping well of water like unto the well of Siloa,
and a most fair road to it, and
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290 From St. Francis to Dante. without is a church hard by

the cave, where dwells a priest ; and above the cave the mountain is
as high again as the height of the Baptistery of Parma, and the cave
itself is so far raised above the level ground that three towers like
that of the Asinelli of Bologna could not reach it, if I remember
aright : so that great trees which grow below show like nettles or
bushes of sage ; and since this region is utterly uninhabited and
desolate, therefore the women and noble ladies of Marseilles when
they come thither for devotion's sake bring with them asses laden
with bread and wine, and pasties and fish, and such other meats as
they desire. Here then is a miracle for the confirmation of the
Invention of the Magdalene's body ; which miracle the Lord showed
through her to prove that it is hers indeed. In those days a young
butcher was going upon the road, and an acquaintance asked him
whence he came. He answered, ' From the town of St. Maximin,
where the body of the blessed Mary Magdalene has been newly
found ; and I kissed her leg.' The other answered, ' Thou hast kissed
no leg of hers, but rather the leg of an ass or a mare, which the
clergy show to the simple for lucre's sake.' When therefore a great
contention had arisen between these two concerning this matter, the
undevout man who believed not in the Magdalene smote the devout
man with many blows of his sword, yet he with the Magdalene's help
took no hurt. Then he who was devoted to the Magdalene smote the
undevout man but once, and there needed no more ; for he
straightway lost his life and found his death. So the champion of the
Magdalene, grieving that he had slain a man, even in self-defence,
and fearing to be taken by the kinsfolk of the deceased, fled to the
city of Aries and thence to St.-Gilles, that he might be safe there,
and give place unto wrath. But the father of the slain man, by a
bribe to a traitor, caused the slayer of his son to be cast into prison,
for he was already condemned to be hanged. Yet in the night before
his execution, as he lay awake in his cell, the Magdalene appeared
to him and said, ' Fear not, my servant, defender and champion of
mine honour, for thou shalt not die : I will help thee in due time,
that all men who see may marvel and give thanks to God our
Creator, Who worketh marvels, and to me, His servant. But when
thou shalt be free, remember this kindness that I have done thee,
and give the reward of this good fortune to God thy liberator, to the
benefit of thine own soul.' With these words the Magdalene
disappeared, and left the man comforted. Next day, when he was
hanged on the gallows, yet his body felt neither harm nor
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Faith. 291 pain ; and suddenly, in the sight of all who had
come to see, there flew swiftly down from heaven a dove, dazzling
white as snow, and alighted on the gallows, and loosed the knot
round the neck of the hanged man, its own devotee, and laid him on
the earth wholly unhurt. But when the officials and men of justice, at
the instigation of the dead man's relatives, would have hanged him
again, he escaped by the goodwill of the butchers, of whom a very
great band was there, ready armed with swords and staves : for he
had been their comrade and friend, and they had also seen this
stupendous miracle. Therefore when he had told all men how he had
slain the man unwillingly to defend his own life and the Magdalene's
honour, and how the Saint had promised him in his dungeon that
she would free him when the time came, then they held themselves
satisfied, and praised God and the blessed Magdalene who had freed
him. And the Count of Provence, hearing these things, desired to see
the man and to hear it from his own lips, and to keep him about his
person at the court all the days of his life. Yet he answered that if
any should offer him the lordship of the whole world he would not
end his life anywhere but in the service of the Magdalene, in the
town of St. Maximin, in the place wherein her body was newly found
in this year 1283." While entirely agreeing with Salimbene that the
Magdalene's body could hardly be in three places at once, we may
well decline to accept the butcher's evidence as conclusive. This
saint is indeed one of the most ubiquitous and elusive of the whole
calendar. Vincent of Beauvais describes her translation from Aix to
Vezelay in A.D. 746 : though even then some men claimed that she
was at Ephesus. In 898 her body was at Constantinople : in 1146 it
was at Vezelay. In 1254 St. Louis went and worshipped it at Ste-
Baume, which is the first hint we get of her ever having been in
Provence. In 1267, again, the saintly king showed his impartiality by
assisting in state at the solemn translation of the rival corpse of
Vezelay, and dividing some fragments of the relics with the Papal
Legate. In 1281, that Legate, now Pope Martin IV, gave to the
Cathedral of Sens a rib from the Vezelay corpse, and declared in his
accompanying Bull that this was the genuine body. Rome had
spoken, and the dispute was for the moment nominally settled : yet
here, only two years later, we find the Pope's particular friend
Charles of Anjou ostentatiously patroniz ing the rival corpse ; and
Salimbene, writing a year later again, imagines that the claims of
Vezelay and Sinigaglia are dead for
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292 From St. Francis to Dante. ever ! No doubt the

perplexed faithful consoled themselves as Sir John Maundeville's did
for the similar multiplication of St. John's head : " I know not which
is true, but God knows ; but however men worship it, the blessed
John is satisfied." This is not the place to treat fully of 13th century
infidelity : but its prevalence may be established by details as
manifold and as startling as those which I have briefly summarized
to indicate the prevailing ignorance and irreverence. Apart from
noble ruffians like Alberigo and Nero da Leccaterra, who had
apparently just enough belief in God's existence to lend point to
their obscene blasphemies, four definite kinds of unbelief may be
traced. There was the learned scepticism of the universities of
Frederick's court, well described in Kenan's Averroes : and the
scoffing scepticism of the rich and self-indulgent, conspicuous in
Piers Plowman and in Sacchetti's sermons. Again, a certain fatalism
and semi-Mahomedanism was brought home from the Crusades :
and the failure of these holy wars provoked, as we have seen, an
explosion of popular infidelity throughout Europe. Lastly, there was
the involuntary scepticism of the pious and faithful soul : a state of
mind which is often ignorantly spoken of as purely modern. Joinville
has recorded a stock instance of this (§ 46) : Franciscan and
Dominican writers are full of similar indications, from St.
Bonaventura downwards. Female saints were specially tortured with
such doubts. Gerson wrote a long treatise on the subject : but
perhaps the most interesting con fession comes from his younger
contemporary, Johann Busch. " What temptations I suffered as a
novice," (he writes) " and especially concerning the Catholic faith,
God alone knoweth, from whom nothing is hid. . . . But God
Almighty suffered me to be thus tried, because in later years, taught
by experience, I liberated many who were buffeted with the same
temptation." Indeed the 13th century, which from our modern
distance seems at first sight to swim in one haze of Fra Angelico
blue, shows to the telescope its full share of barren sand and
pestilent marsh Sensitive souls struggled then too for their faith,
with an agony that was often bitterest before the very altar and in
the presence of what should have been to them the bodily flesh and
blood of the Redeemer. The duties to temporal and spiritual powers
were generally in hopeless conflict : or, within the strictly religious
domain, a man had often no alternative but to disobey flatly either
his Bishop or his Pope. His parish priest might well be one with
whom no honest woman dared be seen to whisper ; if
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Faith. 293 he wished to call in the friars instead, that right

was frequently denied him ; nor could he be certain that the friar
himself was such as we expect all clergy to be in the present
century. He risked worshipping a villain as a saint, and saw the
saints them selves often receiving less hearty recognition than in
these days of open unorthodoxy. For an age must be judged not
only by the few remarkable men it produces, but still more by the
attitude of the rest of the world towards these men. It is of course
far easier to ticket an age with just a dozen names — for even a
great age produces no great number of first-rate men — and to
judge it accordingly. But we do not stop at the fact that St. Paul and
the other apostles were Jews of a certain generation : we ask
further, " How did their own generation accept their persons or their
teaching ? " Why then should we be asked to stop at the fact that a
certain century produced Innocent III and St. Francis, Dante and
Aquinas ? Innocent was believed by some of his time to have barely
escaped damnation, and was often criticized with the greatest
freedom in his own Church. St. Francis and his early missionaries
were treated by many who misunderstood them with a brutality from
which modern England impartially protects expelled monks from
France and Jews from Russia. Florence was a true Nazareth to Dante
; she would have burned him alive if she could have taken him : and
his De Monarchic, was indeed burned as heretical by the Papal
Legate eight years after his death. Aquinas' s family tried to prevent
his becoming a Dominican and a Saint by foul and barbarous means
scarcely credible to us. He was finally poisoned (so at least Dante
believed) by the King who had been the special creation and
particular champion of the Church ; and within a few years of his
death some of his doctrines were solemnly con demned at Paris and
at Oxford. A greater intellect than Aquinas, Roger Bacon, was all but
quenched in prison, and it is only by a miracle that we possess his
writings. There was widespread disbelief in the Stigmata of St.
Francis even towards the end of his own century. Bernard of
Quintavalle, his first disciple, was hunted from forest to forest like a
wild beast by the ' relaxed ' Franciscans : Caesarius of Spires,
another of his truest disciples, was murdered by his conventual
gaoler. St. Bonaventura is one of the most heartily abused men in
the Fioretti. The greatest perhaps of the Franciscan Generals, John
of Parma, narrowly escaped imprisonment for life : while Raymond
Gaufridi, his only successor who dared to take the side of the
Spirituals, was
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294 From St. Francis to Dante. poisoned.* So was Henry of

Luxemburg, the one Emperor of the age whom Dante thought not
unworthy of the throne ; so also was Kilwardby, one of the most
efficient Archbishops of Canterbury. The great English prelates of the
century were indeed peculiarly unfortunate. St. Edmund Kich died in
exile, equally unable to tolerate or to reform that Henry III who, of
all our English kings, was most after the Pope's own heart. St.
Richard of Chichester, when first elected Bishop, was ignominiously
rejected. St. Thomas Cantilupe was excommunicated by the no less
saintly Peckham, who himself was on such bad terms with our great
Edward I, that he retained his canonry at Lyons as a refuge in case
of exile. Grosseteste's whole life was one long struggle with the
powers of evil in high and low places ; and he died in bitterness of
heart. Prominent in the lives of 13th and 14th century saints are the
persecutions they endured at home, and the continued distrust even
of their spiritual advisers. St. Louis, who was a great king as well as
a real saint, could not escape even in his own chamber from the
lords who cursed and called him nicknames in the antechamber. It is
far safer and more comfortable to be a good Roman Catholic in
modern England than it was in Dante's Italy. Of most generations it
may be said that they build the tombs of their prophets : but when
we are inclined to doubt of our own age, let us remember that few
centuries have been more ungrateful to their best men than the
Thirteenth. * Accusations of poison are so common in the Middle
Ages that one can never in any particular case assert more than a
probable suspicion : but the extreme frequency of these suspicions
is in itself most significant.
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CHAPTER XXIV. Believing and Trembling. (HHHERE is one

side of Franciscan life which comes out less clearly in Salimbene's
story than in other documents : for his was a naturally happy
disposition. Many men and women of our own times whose backs
are bowed under the burden of spiritual self-reliance, with its
possible contingencies of doubt and mental agony — to whom God
seems too distant and un approachable without constant help from
visible mediators — many such are attracted to a Church which
promises an end of struggles and uncertainties. This promise may be
more or less true in the case of modern Romanism, with its definite
limitations, its mechanical completeness on the surface, and the
ever-watchful discipline with which it represses attempts to pierce
below the surface. Under the present free competition, a religion like
this tends more and more to attract a certain type of mind in
proportion as it repels other types : so that the Church which
promises certainty without the pain of enquiry becomes more and
more the Church of those who do not even wish to enquire. But in
the 13th century the Church included all minds, except that small
minority which was ready to risk the loss of friends, fortune, and life
for the sake of an unpopular idea. It was therefore a living and
growing Church in a sense very different to that of modern
Romanism : — a Church in which Dante could write without
misgiving " In religion, God cares for nought of us but the heart."
And the individual soul, like the Church of which it was a part, had
its own growing-pains, far more nearly resembling those of our own
century than most men imagine. Even among laymen, sensitive
minds were distracted by constant conflicts among their spiritual
teachers. Dante had no doubt (though here he was probably wrong)
that Pope Anastasius was a heretic. The heresy of Pope Honorius
was openly proclaimed in the Breviary itself. St. James of the Mark,
as we have seen, could only con 
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296 From St. Francis to Dante. gratulate himself that at any

rate no two consecutive Pontiffs have ever been heretical, and that
God will never impute the guilt of such papal heresies to the flocks
who follow them in ignorance. Men's faith was perplexed on all sides
by visions and miracles often proved to be false ; and the friar in his
cell, so far from escaping these spiritual trials, was frequently
tortured tenfold : the early legends show us glimpses of a veritable
religious Inferno. The greatest saints had often the bitterest
struggles : first with their own family and the World : then with
religious doubts ; then with unsympathetic superiors and
companions even in religion ; lastly, with devils on their death bed.
For we need to realise that, if the 13th century looked far oftener
than ours for the visible and tangible presence of God, yet it also
realized with even disproportionate vividness the omnipresence of
the Devil. Flashes of blinding spiritual light alternated with a horror
of great darkness. Much of what is most harsh and repulsive in early
Protestantism is a direct legacy of this medieval Satanology. Many of
the best minds of the Middle Ages suffered Bunyan's own agonies of
mind on the subject of Predestination. The Fioretti tell us how this
despair tortured Ruffino, one of the Three Companions, in the very
presence of St. Francis. Giles, a greater name still in the annals of
the Order, was so buffeted of Satan that " he was wont to say with a
sigh as he returned to his cell in the evening, ' Now I await my
martyrdom.' ' It was the penalty of the constant preponder ance of
sentiment over reason in the religion of the time, just as numb and
weary doubts are the nemesis now of a reason which tyrannizes
over sentiment. The early friars encouraged even the most hysterical
manifestations. The gift of tears in prayer was especially coveted ;
and the blessed Umiliana, lacking these for a time, nearly blinded
herself by trying to recall them artificially with quicklime. Visions and
ecstasies were infectious ; sensual enjoyments of taste, of smell, of
touch were eagerly sought and highly prized in religion. Words of
prayer would leave a literal taste of honey in the mouth or a smell of
incense in the nostrils : again, the ecstasy of devotion would take
more violent forms which seemed perilous even to the enthusiastic
David of Augsburg, [p. 360 Appendix] and are altogether horrible to
the modern mind, whether Catholic or Protestant. Indeed, the crazy
conceits and vain self-torturings recorded in the century from St.
Francis to Dante have never been exceeded, and seldom equalled, in
other Christian ages. So long as these inventions
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Believing and Trembling. 297 were not too antisacerdotal or

too contrary to the then popular currents of religious thought, there
was no extravagance that did not find its admirers and its imitators.
Devils, then, were everywhere, plain to the eye of faith in the most
ordinary and innocent operations of nature. To St. Edmund Rich,
they rode on the thunderstorm and filled the winter twilight like
rooks cawing their way home to roost. To St. Dominic, the fiend was
incarnate in a wretched sparrow which interrupted his studies and
which he therefore plucked alive, exulting in its shrieks. Thousands
of devils would besiege one tiny Franciscan hermitage : friars would
be seen brandishing their sticks in the air and driving them away like
flies. But the fear of the visible Devil was not the worst : there was
always the horrible suspicion that he might be lurking under the
disguise of an angel of light, of the Virgin Mary, or of our Lord
Himself. Long hours of tender spiritual talk, of rapturous visions, of
graces begged and vouch safed, of ecstasies faint with sweetness,
would suddenly reveal themselves as a mere film of bright
deceptions concealing the unspeakable abominations of Hell.
Salimbene gives us a glimpse of this, though his stories are far less
painful than others which might be quoted. He tells (1285-332) of a
friar to whom the Devil came habitually in the form of Saints Francis,
Anthony, Clare, Agnes, the Virgin Mary, or Christ Himself. These
visions promised that he should become Pope ; and he was
delighted to think how much good he could then do. He refused,
however, to follow certain " devilish and unhonest " suggestions of
the Demon, who therefore told him that he had now lost the papacy
by his disobedience. This leads Salimbene to tell a string of similar
devilish deceptions, by way of warning readers how difficult it was to
distinguish between false and true visions. To another Franciscan the
Devil appeared in our Lord's shape ; a third was haunted on his
deathbed by a demon assuring him that he was damned, and, that
his daily adoration of the Host at the Mass had been sheer idolatry.
Again, Brother Richard of England told Salimbene a strange incident
which had happened in his own convent.* " A simple and upright
friar, fearing God and avoiding evil," dwelt in a hermitage near
Naples : and the other Brethren esteemed him so highly that they
made no scruple * An exactly similar occurrence in Spain is told in
Analecta Franciscana, iii., 309 : cf. Vitry, Exempla p. 34. Sir Thomas
More tells a similar story of a woman who hopsd to attain
canonization by suicide (English Works, p. 1188) ; and another of a
carver who wanted his wife to crucify him on Good Friday (p. 1193).
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298 From St. Francis to Dante. of leaving him at home

alone when they went abroad on business. The Devil therefore, in
the likeness of an angel, came and told him " thy life is most
pleasing in God's sight : so that thou wouldst be altogether like unto
His Son (in so far as human frailty permitteth) if thou hadst yet one
thing, for lack whereof thou canst not be saved." The one thing
lacking was, that he should literally crucify himself : and one day the
Brethren found him half-dead, with one hand and both feet nailed to
a cross. Salimbene does not tell us the last end of this friar : in the
parallel incident, the visionary held impenitently to his own belief, till
the discussion was ended by the Devil carrying him off. We might be
tempted to dismiss such stories with a laugh, but for their
significance as to the frequency of homicidal and suicidal delusions
in the cloister ; for monastic records teem with such stories. As
Salimbene puts it " some by the guile of these devils are persuaded
to hang themselves ; others they drive to despair ; others they
drown in the waters or dash to pieces from a precipice ; others they
cast into the fire, whence they shall pass to where their worm shall
not die, and their fire shall not be quenched." Sometimes indeed the
tragedy turns to comedy : for instance, " there was a certain Friar
Minor of Provence who had eaten a partridge for his supper, and
who then went to sleep. Wherefore that night in his sleep the Devil
came and smote him with his fist, so that the Brother awoke in fear,
and fell asleep again. Then came the Devil and smote him as before
; and again the Brother fell asleep. Lo then a third time the Devil
came and smote him mercilessly with his fist, so that the Brother
awaked and cried in fear, ' Ah God ! must I be slain for that I ate a
partridge last night ? ' To whom the Devil replied, ' Ye murmur, ye
are ungrateful and discontented ; I have taken from you the fruit of
your prayers.' And with these words he departed from the friar, who
now changed his life for the better : for perchance he had been
faulty in those things whereof he was accused by the Devil." There is
another charming story of a devil who entered into a peasant and
made him talk Latin. " But he tripped in his Latin, whereat our Lector
mocked him for his faults of grammar. To whom the demon said, ' I
myself can speak Latin as well as thou, but the tongue of this boor is
so gross and unhandy of speech, that for very uncouthness I can
scarce wield it.' ' Our chronicler presently goes on to relate another
long and amusing, but very rambling story about a demoniac
peasant
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Believing and Trembling. 299 who also talked Latin : Miss

Macdonell, who has evidently somehow misunderstood it, goes out
of her way to found upon it a very unjust accusation of
unfriendliness against Salimbene himself.* But it was not always the
Devil who got the best of these discussions. A friar of the Mark
Tapley type, who was crying aloud the praises of God at a time when
such utterances were discouraged as undignified by monastic
moralists, " was rebuked by the Devil, who said that this place was
neither fitting nor honest for the praise of God. To whom the friar
answered and said, * I am so wont to praise God that I cannot
cease therefrom ; for I have learned in the Scriptures that He is
everywhere, and should therefore everywhere be praised by His
own, even as the Apostle saith " I will therefore that men pray in
every place," wherefore even in this base place will I praise God with
my mouth. For God abhorreth no uncleanness but the uncleanness
of iniquity, But thou, wretch, who wert created to praise God in
heaven, hast now lost it by thy pride. Prithee tell me now, wert thou
of those who prayed the Lord to send them into the herd of swine ? '
To whom the demon said, ' Why askest thou this ? ' ' Because,' said
the friar, ' like cleave th to like. Thou art a swine, unclean by nature
and by name ; thou lovest uncleanness and seekest uncleanness ;
for thou wert created to dwell in heaven, and now thou goest from
dunghill to dunghill, and spiest out the cesspools.' At which words
the devil was ashamed, and departed from him in confusion. For all
demons are utterly confounded and put to shame by whatsoever
recalleth their lost glory and the present misery which they have
brought upon themselves." Another friar, a friend of Salimbene' s,
who " made 300 genuflec tions every night, and fasted daily his
whole life long," put a devil to the blush by ridiculing the contrast
between his former high place in heaven and his present lurking-
place in the body of a miserable harlot. Nor did this discomfited
demon mend matters by attempting a diversion. " He paused and
listened to a certain young friar who went singing through the
convent : then said he to the Brethren who stood by, ' Hear ye that
friar who sings as he goes through the house ? He is wholly mine.'
So when that friar had come to the place where the demoniac was,
the Brethren said unto him, ' This demon saith thou art wholly his.'
Then was the Brother ashamed, being conscious within * p. 257.
There is in the original no trace of the almost treacherous change of
tone of which she complains.
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300 From St. Francis to Dante. himself of certain faults :

and, turning aside from him, he found a priest, to whom he
confessed those sins whereof he had greatest remorse of
conscience. Then he returned and said again to the demon, ' Tell
me, wretch, what have I done that I should be wholly thine ? ' To
whom the demon answered, ' A little while ago I knew well ; but
now I have forgotten. Yet know thou beforehand, that I have bound
such a chain to thy feet as, before forty days are past, shall draw
thee out from this Order, and thou shalt go thy way and return to
thy vomit.' And it came to pass as the Devil had said. See now the
virtue of confession, whereby sins are hidden ; for at first the Devil
knew, yet after Confession he could know nothing." This anecdote is
a very mild specimen of a type which even highly accredited
medieval moralists frequently repeat with great gusto. The point is
that confession not only annuls the guilt of sin before God, but also
justifies the criminal in denying it altogether to his fellow-men : as
we are told that, even in modern Ireland, a priest who has confessed
and absolved a penitent of political murder will speak of him
henceforth in public as " the innocent man." On the other hand, this
casting out of demons had its dangerous side. " A certain clerk
named Guglielmo, who dwelt in Parma, was a comely man, strong
and of great stature, evil-minded, and a conjuror of demons. So one
day when the wife of one Ghidino, a blacksmith, was possessed by a
demon, this aforesaid clerk came and began to conjure the demon
to depart from her. To whom the demon said, ' I will indeed depart
from her, but for thee I will weave such a web that thou shalt
nevermore molest me nor drive me forth from my abodes ; for know
well that I will shortly cause thee to be slain, and thou shalt slay
another.' And it came to pass even as he had said ; for a few months
afterwards, in that same city of Parma, the clerk fell out in a certain
courtyard with Ardoino da Chiavari, and they so rushed upon each
other that, the strong stumbling against the strong, both fell
together." These abbreviated quotations give but a faint idea of the
place held by the Devil in even a well-balanced imagination of the
Middle Ages. Difficulties and temptations change their forms as time
goes on : yet then, as now, Christ brought to many souls not peace
but a sword. In spite of the elaborate organiza tion of the hierarchy
and the theory of the sacraments, every man had still to work his
own salvation with fear and trembling : and desperate pangs of
conscience were a sign not of reprobation but of grace.
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Believing and Trembling. 301 Moreover, as a vigorous soul

is never without its struggles, so a vigorous Church has always its
sects. Those who are curious to learn how Italy was distracted
during this period should consult Dr. Lea's great History of the
Inquisition. I have no room here but for those religious aberrations
which came under Salimbene's own eyes. These all throw — unjust
as it would be to press the comparison too closely — very interesting
side-lights on the beginnings of the Franciscans themselves. One
sect originated indirectly with Salimbene's dear friend and master
Hugues de Digne. (254) Two laymen, touched by his preaching,
came and begged admission to the Order : but he refused, and put
them off with Joachitic parables which they very naturally
misunderstood. " Go into the woods," said Hugh, " and learn to eat
roots, for the Tribulations are at hand." They took him literally, and
formed an order of wild hermits whom the Franciscans called
derisively Bushmen (Boscarioli), but who called themselves Friars of
the Sack, waxed in numbers, and became indefatigable beggars, to
the disgust of the older Mendicants. " One day the Lady Giuletta
degli Adhelardi, a devotee of ours, seeing these Friars of the Sack
begging their bread from door to door in Modena, said to the
Franciscans, * I tell you truly, Brethren, we had already so many
bags and wallets to empty our granaries, that this Order of the Sack
was not needed.' ' Salimbene is even more indignant at the
unblushing way in which they caricatured the Franciscan habit, and
accuses them of wearing fine linen under their sackcloth : and he is
sure that Gregory X was divinely inspired in abolishing the Order, as
tending " to weary and burden Christian folk with the multitude of
beggars." He goes on to explain how the Austin Friars were
organized by Alexander IV, who compelled half a dozen sects of
begging Hermits to coalesce into that single Order. Among these
were the Giambonitani, " founded by one Giovanni Bono, who lived
in the days of St. Francis ; his body was buried in my days at
Mantua, and his son I have seen and known, Bro. Matthew of