go up and down corrupting the world and stealing the alms of the
poor. Go away from here!' and he does not open to us, but leaves
us outside shivering in the snow and rain, frozen, starved, till
night; then, if thus maltreated and turned away, we patiently
endure all without murmuring against him, if we think with
humility and charity that this porter really knows us truly and
that God makes him speak thus to us, then, O Brother Leo, write
that in this is the perfect joy.... Above all the graces and all
the gifts which the Holy Spirit gives to his friends is the
grace to conquer oneself, and willingly to suffer pain,
outrages, disgrace, and evil treatment, for the love of
Christ!"[30]

Although by its slight and somewhat playful character this story recalls
the insipid statues of the fourteenth century, it has justly become
celebrated, its spirit is thoroughly Franciscan; that transcendent
idealism, which sees in perfection and joy two equivalent terms, and
places perfect joy in the pure and serene region of the perfecting of
oneself; that sublime simplicity which so easily puts in their true
place the miracle-worker and the scholar, these are perhaps not entirely
new;[31] but St. Francis must have had singular moral strength to
impose upon his contemporaries ideas in such absolute contradiction to
their habits and their hopes; for the intellectual aristocracy of the
thirteenth century with one accord found the perfect joy in knowledge,
while the people found it in miracles.

Doubtless we must not forget those great mystical families, which, all
through the Middle Ages, were the refuge of the noblest souls; but they
never had this fine simplicity. The School is always more or less the
gateway to mysticism; it is possible only to an elect of subtile minds;
a pious peasant seldom understands the Imitation.

It may be said that all St. Francis's philosophy is contained in this
chapter of the Fioretti.[32] From it we foresee what will be his
attitude toward learning, and are helped to understand how it happens
that this famous saint was so poor a miracle-worker.

Twelve centuries before, Jesus had said, "Blessed are the poor in
spirit. Blessed are they who suffer." The words of St. Francis are only
a commentary, but this commentary is worthy of the text.

It remains to say a word concerning two disciples who were always
closely united with Brother Leo in the Franciscan me