To most people, however, there is a fascinating inconsistency in the
position of St. Francis. He expressed in loftier and bolder language
than any earthly thinker the conception that laughter is as divine as
tears. He called his monks the mountebanks of God. He never forgot to
take pleasure in a bird as it flashed past him, or a drop of water, as
it fell from his finger: he was, perhaps, the happiest of the sons of
men. Yet this man undoubtedly founded his whole polity on the negation
of what we think the most imperious necessities; in his three vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience, he denied to himself and those he
loved most, property, love, and liberty. Why was it that the most
large-hearted and poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial
atmosphere in these awful renunciations? Why did he who loved where all
men were blind, seek to blind himself where all men loved? Why was he a
monk, and not a troubadour? These questions are far too large to be
answered fully here, but in any life of Francis they ought at least to
have been asked; we have a suspicion that if they were answered, we
should suddenly find that much of the enigma of this sullen time of ours
was answered also. So it was with the monks. The two great parties in
human affairs are only the party which sees life black against white,
and the party which sees it white against black, the party which
macerates and blackens itself with sacrifice because the background is
full of the blaze of an universal mercy, and the party which crowns
itself with flowers and lights itself with bridal torches because it
stands against a black curtain of incalculable night.
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