Let me now pause to make a most significant point. I was not to leave Italy, or this life of a Franciscan, for over twenty years. The exact count? I do not know. I never did. It was not thirty-three years, for that I would remember as the age of Christ.
I tell you this so that you will understand two things. That I do not rush to Donnelaith in this tale, for it is not time yet, and that during that time my body remained vigorous and quite limber, quite strong, and quite the same. My skin thickened somewhat, losing its baby softness, and my face gathered expressive lines, but not very many. Otherwise…well almost…I remained the same.
I want you to understand how happy I was in this Franciscan life, how natural it was to me, because that is to some extent the heart of the case I wish to make.
Christmas was a great feast in Italy, as it had been back in the Highlands of nightmare which I had so briefly seen. It became to me the most solemn and significant of all Holy Days, and wherever I was in Italy I went home to Assisi at that time.
Even before my first Christmas there, I had read the story of the Christ Child born in the manger and looked at innumerable paintings of it, and I had given myself heart and soul to the little infant in Mary’s arms.
I closed my eyes and imagined that I was a tiny baby, which I had never been, that I was helpless and yearning and innocent. And the feeling which came over me was one of rapture. I resolved to see Christ-a pure child-in every man or woman to whom I spoke. If I suffered a moment of anger or annoyance, which was unusual, I thought of the Christ Child. I imagined I was holding Him in my arms. I believed in Him utterly, and that someday when my destiny was fulfilled-whatever and whenever-I would be with Christ. I would kneel in the manger and I would touch the Christ Child’s tiny hand.
God, after all, was eternal-Child, Man, Crucified Savior, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit-it was all one. I saw this with perfect clarity almost immediately. I saw it so completely that theological questions made me laugh.
By the time I left Italy, I was a priest of God, a renowned preacher, a singer of canticles, a sometime healer and a man who brought consolation or happiness to all he knew.
But let me now explain with greater care:
From the beginning, my innocent manner and my directness astonished everyone; they never guessed the real reason for it; that I was a child. That I feasted on milk and cheese seemed humorous to people. My speed at learning also drew love from everyone around me. I could write Italian, English and Latin within a short time.
Uncompromising saintliness took me body and soul.
There was no task too low for me to perform. I went with those who tended the lepers outside the gates of the town.
I had no fear of the lepers. I could have had it, I think, but I did not cultivate it, and therein lies a key to my nature. I seemed to be able to cultivate what I wished.
Nothing to date had severely repelled me, except hatred and violence. And this attitude remained constant during all my years on earth. I was either saddened by something or seduced by it. There was seldom a middle ground.
Indeed, I had a fascination with the lepers because other people were so frightened of them; and of course I knew how Francis has fought to overcome this, and I was determined to be as great as he. I gave comfort to the lepers. I bathed and clothed those who were too far gone with the disease to care for themselves. Having heard that St. Catherine of Siena once drank the bathwater from a leper, I cheerfully did the same thing.
Very early on, I became known in Assisi-the innocent one, the dazzled one, the fool for God, so to speak. A young monk who is truly on fire with the spirit of Francis, who does naturally what Francis would have us all do.
And because I seemed so completely unsophisticated, so incapable of conniving, so childlike if you will, people tended to open up to me, to tell me things, egged on by my bright curious gaze. I listened to everything. Not a word was wasted. Imagine it-the great infant that I was, learning from people’s smallest gestures and slightest confessions all the major truths of life.
That is what was happening inside my mind.
By night I learned to read and finally to write, and I wrote constantly, taking as little sleep as I could. I memorized songs and poems. I studied the paintings of the Basilica, the great murals by Giotto which tell all the significant events of Francis’s life, including how the stigmata came to him-the wounds in his hands and feet from God. And I went out among the pilgrims to talk to them, to hear what they had to say of the world.
The first year of which I knew the date was 1536. I went often to Florence, to give to the poor, to visit their hovels and bring bread and something to drink. Florence was still a city of the Medici. Perhaps she was past her great glory, as some have said since, but I don’t think at the time that anyone would have said such a thing.
On the contrary, Florence was a magnificent and thriving place. Printed books were sold there by the thousands; the sculptures of Michelangelo were everywhere to be seen. The guilds were powerful, still, though much trade had moved to the New World; and the city was an endless spectacle of processions, such as the great Procession of Corpus Christi, and performances of beautiful tableaux and plays.
The bank of the Medici was then the greatest bank in the world.
Everywhere in Florence men and women were literate and thoughtful and talkative; this was the city which had produced the poet Dante and the political genius Machiavelli; the city which produced Fra Angelico and Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli, a city of great writers, great painters, great princes and great saints. The city itself was made of solid stone and filled with palaces, churches, wondrous piazzas, gardens and bridges. Perhaps it was a city unique in all the world. It certainly thought that it was, and I did too.
As my duties expanded, I soon knew every inch of Florence, and heard one way or another all the news of the world.
The world of course was on the brink of disaster! People spoke continuously of the final days.
The English King Henry VIII had abandoned the true faith; the great city of Rome was only just recovering from its rape by Protestant troops and Catholic Spaniards alike. Indeed the pope and the cardinals had had to take shelter in the castle of Sant’Angelo, and this had left with people a deep disillusionment and distrust.
The Black Plague was still with us, rising every ten years or so to claim victims. There were wars on the Continent.
The worst tales, however, were of the Protestants abroad-of mad Martin Luther, who had turned the entire German people against the Church, and other rabid heresies-the Anabaptists, and the Calvinists, who made great gains every day in the realm of Christian souls.
The pope was rumored to be powerless against these heresies. Councils were called and called but nothing really was done. The Church was in the midst of reforming itself to answer to the great heretics, John Calvin and Martin Luther. But the world had been rent in half it seemed by the Protestants, who swept an entire culture before them when they broke with the authority of the pope.
Yet our world of Assisi, and Florence and the other cities and towns of Italy, seemed splendid and rich and dedicated to the True Christ. It seemed, when reading Scriptures, impossible to believe that Our Lord had not walked on the Appian Way. Italy filled my soul-with its music, its gardens, its green countryside-it seemed to me the only place that I should ever want to be. Rome was the only city I loved more than Florence, and only perhaps because of its size, because of the splendor of St. Peter’s. But then Venice too was a great marvel. For me the poor of one city were pretty much as the poor of another. The hungry were the hungry. They were always waiting for me with open arms.