Having overcome the many tribulations and they were tempted to leave for the land of the infidels to seek martyrdom.

193 Infused virtue and acquired virtue 194 Dangers of the solitary life 195 The Capuchins on the verge of going among the infidels 196 Contemplation as the aim of religious life 197 Some Friars prefer the Anchoritic life 198 Padre Ludovico dissuades them from be too fond of solitude 199 Some contemplative Friars

(193) It is not without reason that the learned called the holy virtues habits and held them to be of two kinds, that is, infused and acquired. They called faith, hope and charity infused habits. They called ‘acquired habits’ all the others that are acquired with struggle and one’s own efforts, as are the seven liberal arts. This was not without reason, because just as the habit and precious clothing adorn the body, so the habits of virtue adorn the soul and make it the worthy spouse of God. Without that clothing anyone who entered the wedding feast without the marriage robe the great King threw out into the darkness, bound hand and foot. So all those at death who will be found to be without the habit of charity will be thrown out into the infernal darkness. The clothing of charity makes us sons of God, brothers of Christ and heirs of the kingdom and frees us from every evil. This was what made the first saints and leaders of Orders so fervent in leaving the world, with all the pleasures it offers, and begin religious life. For it seemed to them very difficult to live in this world in the grace of God because our nature is so prone to evil. Enlightened by God, therefore, they knew it was necessary to mortify the flesh. Onvious experience taught them that the more the flesh is mortified the more it is rendered obedient to the spirit. From this stemmed the observance of poverty, sleeping on the ground, fasting on bread and water and countless other afflictions that those servants of God found so as to humiliate the flesh and make it obedient to the spirit. Finally, to mortify the most important part, namely one’s own will, they prescribed holy obedience. In this they chose those most expert and enlightened in the service of God as their shepherds and superiors and submitted to their will. This was regarded as the first or at least the surest state in the service of God. In that state they knew God concurred with cooperated with them with his favour that it was impossible for someone truly obedient to be damned. This is because all our appetites are bridled by obedience.

In the beginning all this happened to our first Fathers. For some years they were tested and had passed through every kind of suffering. Not only did they eat just bread and water but many of them lived on fruit, herbs and water for entire months. They slept in caves, under tress and wherever they could. They were so accustomed to suffering that they worried about it. They were very enlightened by God. Nonetheless they knew that if Padre Ludovico was not their Prelate they would have easily foundered. This was the main reason that once they understood the greatness, nobility and necessity of obedience they were strengthened in the service of God. They founded themselves on holy obedience and received from God much more humility, spirit and mortification by virtue of holy obedience than they had done in all the abstinence they suffered as well as all the other afflictions that they had received because of the many persecutions.

(194) No tongue could describe what those first Capuchins suffered. Nonetheless, just as I heard them say many times, the fruit of obedience held first place in the holy Order. Those servants of God used to say, “By the mercy of God we were protected, while staying in forests for entire months and years without seeing one another. I believe that someone staying on his own without falling is a greater miracle than raising the dead. As for myself I can’t think of a safer life than to be in the Order and let oneself be governed by his Superior. Nor would I want to return to the woods alone as a fugitive and live on the loose. No tongue could describe the grave temptations suffered by those servants of God who stay on their own. However, I am not saying that those servants of God are not helped a lot. Otherwise it would not be possible to last a single day, especially if His Majesty allows us to be persecuted unjustly. Therefore it is necessary to trust in His goodness. However when we can remain under obedience in the observance of the Rule, once can be content with things as they are. In the beginning that suffering was a great strain. Then later the happy state of the Order made everything easy. May God preserve us in the quiet we have now. May he remove from us every temptation that would have us leave the Order. May he enable us to overcome every temptation by considering how to apply ourselves completely to holy contemplation. It is not true that we can become better outside the Order. Experience shows that. All those who leave the Order are in danger and God always allows them to be engulfed in every kind of sin. They become worse than seculars and a scandal to the world.”

Therefore that resolve of the first Capuchins to remain under obedience was a good thing, as will be described below.

(195) Having defeated and weakened the enemy army and plundered and siezed their lands and cities, the worldly emperor returns with great rejoicing and pomp, absolutely happy. He invites all the Barons and important persons of his empire to join him te celebrate and to rejoice with him over the victory he had won. Those servants of God, the first Capuchins, did just that spiritually when they saw themselves free of the grave troubles they had suffered. Jubilant they all came together. They told one another about what they had suffered from the adversaries. With immense joy each exhorted his brother to endure every future evil that would come his way because of their wish to observe the life they professed. God strengthened and inspired them so much in their suffering that they did not like being without it. They were just like valiant captains for whom things are going well only when they find themselves fighting with enemies. And so those valiant servants of God were so used to fighting with demons in deserted places and caves against the many different temptations that they had suffered at that time, that if they didn’t have any opportunity to show how much they desired to suffer for the love of Christ they felt lazy.

For many months it lasted that each time they met they talked about the help that our Lord God gave them and how he inflamed their hearts. A discussion emerged among them about all of them going off to the land of the infidels to preach the Christian faith to them and die for that faith. They would tell each another, “Our Lord has sent us so many difficulties for no other reason than to make us see the world as an encumbrance. We are useless members and the whole world holds us in contempt. We have suffered so much, that now there is nothing left for us except our wretched life. Let us go to offer it to Jesus Christ. Just as he died for us, so let us die for the sake of his love and convert our neighbours to the true faith.”

(196) This desire was so strong that Padre Ludovico had much to do to calm many of them. After they had tasted the sweetness of contemplation and they lived in such austerity where they were used to solitude, he also had to do to bring them back to the formalites of the Order. Conversation together seemed difficult because their minds were so absorbed with prayers and divine thoughts that any other task seemed disagreeable. Their whole foundation was in prayer. They said, “The purpose of the Rule and religious life is nothing other than contemplation, using the appropriate means of abstinence, poverty and silence to conquer the passions and disordered affections and to submit the body to the prompting of the spirit. The observance of the Rule in the external matters that the Holy Spirit has set in place for us to mortify the flesh would be in vane if after we have done all these things, as we have done, the purpose of the Rule is still not attained. That purpose is to dedicate ourselves to perfect contemplation and to remain united with God, as much as our human frailty allows. Therefore we find ourselves in this way of life where God has brought us miraculously through persecutions. It does not seem right to us that after having suffered with so many struggles to come to this way of life that, once we have arrived, we allow ourselves to lose it by returning to formalities, conversations, manual tasks and other unnecessary tasks. Even if they are meritorious and done for the sake of obedience, they are not fitting for someone who can do more. It is like a great merchant who can gain a thousand scudi. Surely he would not be happy by profiting just twopence. We have the example of the Seraphic Father Saint Francis. In the beginning he mortified his body by subjecting himself to different practices. The Lord also had him pass through many difficulties. However, when he was purified he carefully fled every other task and gave himself totally to contemplation. Then he became a great prophet because he was so enlightened by God in lofty contemplation and he enlightened the whole world. With his life and his Rule he showed the true path to serve God.”

(197) Some remained so steadfast in this opinion that they went to the extreme like the French priest Fra Guglielmo, a great contemplative. Despite the incentive of obedience, he withdrew to a very poor shack in the mountains of Foligno. There he gave himself completely to holy contemplation. I was in the old friary at Foligno when the news arrived that the poor fellow was ill. Padre Bartolomeo da Spello, the Guardian of that friary, immediately sent two friars. They were Fra Pietro da Pontremoli, a priest, and Fra Francesco da Cesena. They went to bring him back to the friary and under the mantle of the Order so that he could die within obedience. They had not gone half way when they learned from farmers that he had died. We were all saddened that he had died outside the Order, although there was some hope because of his good life.

I believe I should not by-pass Fra Francesco Milanese. While he was on Mount Sibilla, anchorites were there. Because of his great desire to join them he went looking for them for more than two months. Unable to find them he came back dissatisfied. On his return he told me, “I no longer want to believe that those anchorites are there.” What can we say about the great servant of God Fra Francesco da Macerata. When the Friars got up in the morning they were waiting for him to do the cooking. However, during the night he had gone off into the mountains and stayed there for two or three months. Occasionally, whenever the urge came upon him, he returned. At night the poor fellow slept in caves. He ate herbs and fruit. Everyone was amazed that he hadn’t died. All this happened because of that first impulse which absorbed him so much that he seemed like a man from the next life. I will say nothing about Padre Fra Pacifico of the Marches, a very holy man. For two months he went in search of solitary places where he could devote himself completely to holy contemplation. When he couldn’t find what he desired he returned to his mother and said, “Know that I have been deceived by the devil. Nonetheless God has drawn out this good from my being tempted about solitude. I no longer wish for it. I sincerely confess that there is no better place to serve God than among the Capuchins.”

(198) So because of the great fervour that simmered in heart of those servants of God they desired nothing else than to suffer and to dedicate themselves to holy contemplation. Moreover the Lord never failed to always give them the opportunity to prove themselves, as well as the light to be on guard against plunging headlong from such lofty heights to which they had arrived. It pleased the Lord God to put it into the heart of Padre Frate Ludovico to assemble all his sons to inform them that this was a temptation of the enemy to make them leave the Order. He said to them, “My beloved brothers and sons, I do not dislike your strong desire for solitude. I’d say though that nothing is good and religious if it is not done under holy obedience. We see this with the early Fathers. Under Constantine the Great the persecution of the Church ceased and she received peace. There were no longer matryrs in the world. Some, fervent with the love of God, having caste out the demons of the idols, wanted to cast them out also from the forests and deserted places and so went into solitude. And Monastic Life began in this way. However, since they were not experienced, many of them went wrong because of the temptation of the devil. That is why those Venerable Fathers judged that solitude is not for everyone. Those Venerable Fathers only sent into solitude to work at contemplation, the aim of the religious and coenobitic life, certain ones they judged worthy, those who had mortified their passions and their vices for a period of some years under obedience in a monastery of the congregation. It was not good that religious Orders lack this state of life that occupied primacy of place in the Church of God, but on the condition that they not distance themselves from obedience, but rather they should receive the food they needed from the Monks. That is why all the ancient abbeys had some little cells and solitary places on the site of the abbey where the solitaries stayed, whom they judged to be of greater perfection. In this way the imperfect Monks saved themselves in the abbey under obedience and the most perfect were given the opportunity to reach greater perfection. This arrangement was judged the most appropriate and suitable for the salvation of everyone. Naiive solitude, that is, to leave the world to go into solitude without experience and mortification, was regarded as extremely dangerous. They knew from experience that very few persevered and so they prohibited that kind of solitude. Those who left the world had to remain under obedience to some holy man for some years. They called these Abbots. They had four or six disciples, some more and some less. Those early Fathers were convinced that religious life should be led in this way, until Basil the Great came along. He made a Rule and ordered that everyone should live under obedience.”

Therefore we have begun this holy Reform, however I do not want us to end up following our own ideas, but let us align ourselves in everything to the example and teaching of the early Fathers and especially of our Seraphic Father Saint Francis. He always observed this way of life in his time That many of the perfect ones always lived the anchoritic life. In great poverty and abstinence they remained in remote little places far from ordinary dwellings. We see this in the friary of the Carcere of Assisi, Scarzuola, Farneto, Speco di Canale di Sant’Urbano and many other places in the Province of Saint Francis where Father Saint Francis and all his companions dwelt as did other holy men in all the Provinces. Father Saint Francis called them his ‘Round Table.’ That is way I want us to go. We will take up friaries far from the towns. We wisht that anyone who wants to stay in a solitary cell, having being judged as suitable, be allowed and be given every possible support. In this way you will have your wish. However, my sons, stay calm.”

This talk pleased those servants of God so much that they calmed down completely. They knew that the Holy Spirit had had this told them for their salvation.

(199) This was the reason that Padre Ludovico put in the first Constitutions that whoever wanted to lead the solitary anchoritic life, when his superior judged him suitable, should be given every support. In this way the Congregation should never want for holy men dedicated to holy contemplation, completely detached from every obstacle. He said, “Those few who give themselves to perfection will be more important than all the rest. With their example the seculars will be always be close to the devotions of the poor Congregation.” So many holy men practised solitude in the beginning. The Venerable Padre Frate Giovanni di Fano was an example of this. For six months he fasted on bread and water while he was in a little cell on the site of the friary at Scandriglia. If Padre Fra Ludovico hadn’t taken him from there to send him to begin the Provinces of Lombardy, he said he would have stayed there for the rest of his life. The same goes for Padre Fra Antonio Corso. He stayed a whole year in a little cell in the friary of San Valentino at Foligno. During that time he didn’t eat bread but only ate five ounces of beans each day. Frate Vincenzo da Foiano stayed eight years in a little solitary cell in the friary at Montecasale. He fasted continuously on bread and water. Frate Giovanni from Puglia stayed eight months at the Spisciolo at Montecasale during which time he did not eat bread but only a bowl of vegetables each day. The same friar also stayed five years in a cave in Puglia while fasting continuously on bread and water. Frate Giovanni Spagnolo stayed four years in a little solitary cell in the friary of Montepulciano. He fasted continuously on bread and water. These have been during my time and I have known them all. It would take too long to tell about so many holy men in all the Provinces who in their time have led the solitary life with highest poverty and great strictness about food.

To the praise and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.