The personality and influence of St Francis have great attractions under whatever aspect they be viewed. He is the representative of a new development of Christianity--of the period when the bearings of Christian teaching on the concerns of daily and domestic life were first realised, and when the masses of the laity ceased to look upon Christianity as a cult, and began to feel it as a living faith by which conduct could be regulated. It is in this sense that Ruskin, speaking of St Francis, says that it was he who taught men how to behave. By example chiefly. For the bearing of the man who would be guided solely by Christian love and charity had an irresistible charm for those who saw him, and the tidings of his influence, carried beyond the confines of his district by enthusiastic followers, acted as the breath by which latent emotional cravings were everywhere fanned into ardent devotion to the needs of suffering mankind.
To his companions the _Poverello_ of Assisi appeared as the true representative of the Lord’s anointed, and it was owing to this that the movement which he inaugurated had so great an influence on life, on literature and on art. The measure of the man is not easy to recover. His companions never tired of drawing parallels between him and Jesus of Nazareth, and, as in the case of Jesus, a number of miracles wrought by him were introduced into the descriptions of his life, which throw darkness rather than light on his personality. But the influence of the man may well appear miraculous, considering how instantaneous and far-reaching was the impression which he produced--an impression to which history offers few parallels. This influence is so marvellous that the historian who would show it in the light of cause and effect must needs have a firm hold on the sequence of events that led up to it, and on the prevalent attitude of mind in the different strata of society that prepared it.
The influence of the Franciscan movement on literature and art has been made the subject of a number of interesting inquiries. Ozanam was the first to analyse it in its bearings on Italian poetry. The _Canticle of the Sun_ (_Laudes Creaturarum_) by St Francis, is among the earliest poems in the vernacular, and it led to the composition of numerous poems and hymns. Apparently St Francis in early days himself sang the songs of the troubadours, and among his first converts was a troubadour who was afterwards known as Fra Pacifico. Hence an element in the religious poems of the Franciscans which reflects the poet’s delight in nature and the beggar’s freedom from care. Many celebrated hymns were written by Franciscans, among them the _Dies Irae_, first sung by Thomas of Celano, and the _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_ written by Jacopone of Todi, a famous and prolific poet. As a companion to the _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_, the Hymn of the Virgin at the Cross, Jacopone afterwards wrote the _Stabat Mater Speciosa_, the Hymn of the Virgin at the cradle; the keynote of the one is sorrow, the keynote of the other is joy.