Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/730

 FRANCIS remarkable and winning features. Of the birds in the woods, the sheep in the fields, the ass on which he rode, the bees, the hares, the rabbits, he always spoke as his brothers and sisters. When the birds sang he said, Our sisters, the birds, are pleasing God.&quot; A little rabbit ran to him for protection ; it was received into his bosom, as one of his biographers, the famous general of the order Bonaventura, says, &quot;as if it had some hidden sense of the perfection of the father s heart.&quot; The very wolves, which all men were afraid to encounter, were tamed by him, arid came like lambs and crouched at his feet. So at least it is related in one memorable case in the legends of the &quot; Fioretti di San Francesco &quot; (the &quot; Little Flowers of St Francis,&quot; a collec tion of marvellous stories about the saint very popular in Italy to this day). There may be much in these stories that exceeds the limits of credibility; the amount of accurate fact lying beneath them can no longer be traced ; but none can hesitate to believe the beautiful depth of love which they reveal in the character of St Francis, and the fascination of personal influence which they show to have been possessed by him. Connected with his love of nature and all living things was his poetry for St Francis was not only saint but poet. The stream of Italian song, so soon to swell into the full volume of Dante (1265-1321), began to flow in the rugged but touching verse of the great preacher of Assisi. In him the troubadour inspiration, dying out in its original seat, was transmuted into a spiritual minstrelsy hardly poetry, so imperfect is its form, but a lyrical cry, as Ozanam says (in his volume Les poetes franciscains, 1852), the first broken utterance of a new voice which was soon to fill the world. The most characteristic of his songs is a Cantico delle Creature (Song cf the Creation), which has been translated in Mrs Oliphant s interesting life of the saint. Marvellous as is the life of St Francis, the marvel that followed his death is more astonishing than any that marked his earthly career. It is said that when his naked body was visible after death, there was found upon it legibly impressed the marks of our Lord s passion; and the sacred story is that one day as he prayed in the solitude of Mount Averno, near the sources of the Tiber and the Arno, there appeared to him the vision as of a seraph with the arms extended and the feet as if fixed to a cross ; and as he thought in his heart what the vision might mean, there were revealed on his hands and feet the signs of nails as in the Crucified One. This is well known as the famous miracle of the Stigmata or wounds of our Lord. There seems to be no doubt that some such marks were found on the dead body of the saint, whatever explanation the phenomena may admit of. That there was anything really supernatural in the phenomena will be so readily discredited by the modern reader that it is unnecessary we should attempt any elaborate solution of the marvel. An interesting analysis of all the facts, and such historical explanation as they seem to admit of, will be found in Ease s life of the saint, and an article, founded upon the analysis there given, in Good Words for 1867, p. 38 (&quot;History of a Miracle&quot;). St Francis, worn out by his many labours and consuming zeal, died on 4th October 1226. &quot; Of all saints,&quot; says Milman (Hist, of Latin Christ., vol. iv. 268), &quot;St Francis was the most blameless and gentle. He was emphatically the saint of the people, of a poetic people like the Italians.&quot; And to this day the name, the life, and the long.sviffering of the popular saint live in the hearts of the poorer and devout Italians. Of what may be called more or less original biographies of the saint there are in the well known Ada Sanctorum no fewer than three: (1) The Life by Thomas of Celano (whose name is also associated with the composition of the famous Dies Ircc), written only three years after the saint s death ; (2) the Life of the Trcs Socii, three companions of the saint written in 1247; and, lastly, (3) tlieLifc by Bonaventura, Platonic schoolman and general of the order in 1263. The works of the saint have been collected and edited by Joh. de la Haye, S. Francisci Opera, 1739 sq. There is an elaborate biography by Malan, Hint, de S. Francois d Assist, 1841; and notices are also to be found in Helyot s Hist, dcs Ordrcs Eeligicux, t. vii., and. Butler a Lives of the Saints. There are two recent lives, both of special interest, by the German divine, JIase, and by Mrs Oliphant in Macmillan s Sunday Library series. See FRANCISCANS. &amp;lt;j. T.) FRANCIS BORGIA, ST (1510-1572), duke of Gaudia, and afterwards general of the Jesuit order, was the son of John, duke of Gandia, a scion of the well-known family of Borgia or Borja to which Popes Calixtus III. and Alexander VI. had belonged, and of Joanna of Aragon, daughter of Alphonso, a natural son of Ferdinand the Catholic. He was born at Gandia (Valencia), on the 10th of October 1510, and from his infancy was remarkable for his piety. Educated from his twelfth year at Saragossa under the charge of his uncle the archbishop, he had begun to show a strong inclina tion towards the monastic life, when his father, wishing to divert his thoughts elsewhere, sent him in 1528 to the court of Charles V. Here he soon distinguished himself greatly by his diligence and fidelity; and on his marriage with Eleanor de Castro, a Portuguese lady of high rank, he was created by the emperor Marquis of Lombay, and at the same time received the appointment of master of the horse to the empress. He accompanied Charles on his African expedition in 1535, and also into Provence in 1536 ; and on the death of the empress in 1539 he was deputed to convoy the body to the burial place in Granada. Circum stances connected with the funeral obsequies there deepened in his mind long-cherished impressions as to the vanity of all worldly things, and fixed his determination to leave the court betimes, and also, should he survive his consort, to embrace the monastic life. On his return to Toledo, however, new honours were thrust upon him, much against his will ; he was made viceroy of Catalonia and commander of the order of St James. At Barcelona, the seat of his government, he lived a life of great austerity, but discharged his official duties with energy and efficiency until 1543, when, having succeeded his father in the dukedom, he at length obtained permission to resign his viceroyalty, and to retire to a more congenial mode of life at Gandia. Having already held some correspondence with Loyola, he now encouraged the recently founded order of Jesuits to the utmost of his power. One of his first cares at Gandia was to build a college for them ; and on the death of Eleanor in 1546, he resolved to become himself a member of their society. The difficulties arising from political and family circumstances were removed by a papal dispensation, which allowed him, in the interests of his young children, to retain his dignities and worldly possessions for four years after he should have taken the vows. In 1550 he visited Rome, where he was received with every mark of distinction, and where he furnished the means for building the Collegium Romanum. Returning to Spain in the following year, he, with the emperor s consent, formally resigned his rank and estate in favour of his eldest son, laid aside his ducal robes,, assumed the Jesuit habit, was ordained as a priest, and en tered upon a life of penance and prayer. At his own earnest request, in which he was seconded by Loyola, a proposal that he should be created a cardinal by Julius III. was departed from ; and at the command of his superior he employed himself in the work of itinerant preaching. In 1554 he was appointed commissary -general of the order in Spain, Portugal, and the Indies, in which capacity he showed great activity, and was successful in founding many new and thriving colleges. In 1556, shortly after the retirement from public life of his old master Charles, Borgia had an inter view with him. Charles, unfavourable to all innovation, and looking with distrust upo?a Jesuit pretensions, endea-