, of
rivalries and blasphemy. Learning does not edify, and it may destroy, as
is proved by the scribes of the Church, swollen with pride and
arrogance, who by dint of reasoning fall into heresy."[40]

We have seen that the return to evangelical simplicity had become a
necessity; all the heretical sects were on this point in accord with
pious Catholics, but no one spoke in a manner so Franciscan as
Gioacchino di Fiore. Not only did he make voluntary poverty one of the
characteristics of the age of lilies, but he speaks of it in his pages
with so profound, so living an emotion, that St. Francis could do little
more than repeat his words. The ideal monk whom he describes,[41] whose
only property is a lyre, is a true Franciscan before the letter, him of
whom the _Poverello_ of Assisi always dreamed.

The feeling for nature also bursts forth in him with incomparable vigor.
One day he was preaching in a chapel which was plunged in almost total
darkness, the sky being quite overcast with clouds. Suddenly the clouds
broke away, the sun shone, the church was flooded with light. Gioacchino
paused, saluted the sun, intoned the _Veni Creator_, and led his
congregation out to gaze upon the landscape.

It would be by no means surprising if toward 1205 Francis should have
heard of this prophet, toward whom so many hearts were turning, this
anchorite who, gazing up into heaven, spoke with Jesus as a friend talks
with his friend, yet knew also how to come down to console men and warm
the faces of the dying at his own breast.

At the other end of Europe, in the heart of Germany, the same causes had
produced the same effects. From the excess of the people's sufferings
and the despair of religious souls was being born a movement of
apocalyptic mysticism which seemed to have secret communication with
that which was rousing the Peninsula. They had the same views of the
future, the same anxious expectation of new cataclysms, joined with a
prospect of a reviving of the Church.

"Cry with a loud voice," said her guardian angel to St. Elizabeth of
Schonau ([Cross] 1164), "cry to all nations: Woe! for the whole world has
become darkness. The Lord's vine has withered, there is no one to tend
it. The Lord has sent laborers, but they have all been found idle. The
head of the Church is ill and her members are dead.... Shepherds of my
Church, you are sleeping, but I shall awaken you! Kings of the earth,
the cry of your iniquity has risen even to