…however wild and romantic his gyrations might appear to many, [Francis] always hung on to reason by one invisible and indestructible hair…. The great saint was sane…. He was not a mere eccentric because he was always turning towards the center and heart of the maze; he took the queerest and most zigzag shortcuts through the wood, but he was always going home.
Protestants like myself often present a natural aversion to talk of “saints” in the history of the Church. Frankly, I’m not surprised that this remains the case; we are often told that all men and women are equal under God, and “sainthood” sounds like a strange form of idol worship to the Protestant mind. Seriously, the normal definition states that a saint is a person who achieved an exceptional degree of holiness – we could instantly cite Romans 3:10 and be done with the whole business, right?
Yet, there’s something attractive about knowing that people on earth did miraculous things, inspiring generations through their utter devotion and service to God. Saint Francis of Assisi, for example, continues to inspire people. Or, you might say, confuse them mightily with his strange paradoxical juxtapositions. As a man who single-handedly started an entire order by his lonesome with no more than a whim and a prayer, the stories say he suddenly turned into a man of the wilderness like John the Baptist (he came from much wealthier origins, however). In fact, his story and the sheer immensity of his long biography contributed to the conversion of G.K. Chesterton to Roman Catholicism in the first place. Why?
Well, that’s why this book exists!
I would call it less a “biography” in the dry historical sense, and also lacking in the ways of a devotional, worshipful look at the subject matter. Rather, Chesterton strives (as he usually does) for a third way around the bend – to both look at Francis in his contemporary environs and from the perspective of 20th century English society (from which Chesterton derives). That, I think, gives us a very new perspective on the whole thing that does not fit in one place or the other, allowing us to actually comment with something of substance.
To wit: Saint Francis sounds like a crazy person outside of religious perspective. One day, he just suddenly becomes devoted to God’s service to the poor, throwing all of his clothes away and trading them for the lowest of the low. He took care of lepers, social outcasts in both Biblical times and elsewhere, refusing to ignore them even with the obvious health risks (spoiler alert: he did not die of leprosy, which has to be a miracle in itself). He preaches to and makes friend with animals – clearly crazy. Or not?
Many of Francis’ actions seem allegorical, as if there were some kind of outside observer commentating on his life like a literary critic. Most people know him for the Stigmata, wherein he receives the five wounds of Christ. Did this stuff even happen? Could it happen? The received narrative of Saint Francis just confuses the common person, myself included. Chesterton knows, quite obviously, that there’s a paradox of God’s work happening here; his main question, then, writes above and around the really compelling thought of what Francis was thinking! What was going on in his mind?
I know Chesterton as a rather jovial fellow purely from his writings; he sees greatness in low art, and always finds high adventure in the most mundane of things. This makes Francis’ primary designations as a jongleur de Dieu – a jester of God, in a sense – fitting for Chesterton’s adoration. If the ambitious Troubadours spoke the language of love as their main attraction, than the jester took a predominantly secondary role. They lightened the mood of the place, so to speak, in a workmanlike fashion. Saint Francis found truth in a secondary role, that of a servant, as opposed to the main attraction. In the frivolity, one can be a fool for God in complete total freedom, unhindered by social concerns or the “right” thing to do. It would not surprise me that 1 Corinthians 4 would end up in all of this.
At some point, Francis’ perspective on the world suddenly changed and made him into the man we know, and not so much the serious prince who eagerly searched for glory and fame in battle (or just a simple life). Chesterton keeps dancing around the answer because he does not quite know how to express his conjecture in a way that does it justice. He explains allegorically, but that’s as close as you get (incoming wall of text):
We used to be told in the nursery that if a man were to bore a hole
through the centre of the earth and climb continually down and down,
there would come a moment at the centre when he would seem to be
climbing up and up. I do not know whether this is true. The reason I do
not know whether it is true is that I never happened to bore a hole
through the centre of the earth, still less to crawl through it. If I do
not know what this reversal or inversion feels like, it is because I
have never been there. And this also is an allegory. It is certain that
the writer, it is even possible that the reader, is an ordinary person
who has never been there. We cannot follow St. Francis to that final
spiritual overturn in which complete humiliation becomes complete
holiness or happiness, because we have never been there. I for one do
not profess to follow it any further than that first breaking down of
the romantic barricades of boyish vanity, which I have suggested in the
last paragraph. And even that paragraph, of course, is merely
conjectural, an individual guess at what he may have felt; but he may
have felt something quite different. But whatever else it was, it was so
far analogous to the story of the man making a tunnel through the earth
that it did mean a man going down and down until at some mysterious
moment he begins to go up and up. We have never gone up like that
because we have never gone down like that; we are obviously incapable of
saying that it does not happen; and the more candidly and calmly we read
human history, and especially the history of the wisest men, the more we
shall come to the conclusion that it does happen. Of the intrinsic
internal essence of the experience, I make no pretence of writing at
all. But the external effect of it, for the purpose of this narrative,
may be expressed by saying that when Francis came forth from his cave of
vision, he was wearing the same word “fool” as a feather in his cap; as
a crest or even a crown. He would go on being a fool; he would become
more and more of a fool; he would be the court fool of the King of
Paradise.
Which, really, sums up the whole thing: by looking at the world upside down, he ended up seeing that what he thought was upside down was really right side up. All the stories just make that point infinitely clear. The wisdom of God is not the same as that of this world, and Francis quite understood where his treasures lay. That sounds like a typical Chestertonian inversion, doesn’t it? So yes, the book’s pretty great, with all the wit you’d expect from Chesterton. Just be wary that it does require some notion of the historical context of Francis (although Wikipedia certainly simplifies things).
