Tradition and Innovation, Harmony and Hierarchy in St. Francis of Assisi's Sermon to the Birds

TRADITION AND INNOVATION, HARMONY AND HIERARCHY IN ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI'S SERMON TO THE BIRDS Lynn White, Jr., that groundbreaking scholar of Western science and technology, often touched on Franciscan issues in his long academic career. His articles, "The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,"1 "Continuing the Conversation,"2 and "Natural Science and Naturalistic Art in the Middle Ages,"3 though of different levels of specialization, have the remarkable ability to stimulate thoughtful reply and research by raising the right issues: issues which challenge previously accepted views and probe toward the center of whole complexes of ideas crucial to Francis' thought. White's comments have evoked various criticisms,4 but none of the authors replying to his work has yet given his many remarks concerning Francis the sustained and detailed scholarly examination they deserve.5 This article will attempt to discuss some questions White raises, within the context of incidents such as Francis' Sermon to the Birds,6 1 First published in Science Magazine, March 19, 1967, but quoted here from the more accessible D. and E. Spring, Ecology and Religion in History (New York, 1974). PP- 15-31· 8 In ed. I. M. Barbour, Western Man and Environmental Ethics (Reading, Mass., 1973). PP- 55-°3· * In American Historical Review, 52 (1947), 421-435. 4 See, for example, the responses by E. Doyle, "Ecology and the Canticle of Brother Sun," New Blackfriars 55 (1974), 392-402; and F. Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man (London, 1972). 5 The present author in fact discusses the issues and incidents here more fully in his dissertation, "Tradition and Innovation in St. Francis of Assisi's Interpretation of Nature," Cornell University, 1983; and in the book, St. Francis of Assisi and Nature, currently in publication by Oxford University Press. * Celano, Vita Prima 58; Fioretti 16. St Francis of Asstsi's Sermon to the Birds397 the Stilling of the Swallows,7 and the Cauterization by Brother Fire.8 These incidents, especially the Sermon to the Birds, are of major importance because of their extended and detailed exposition in the early sources. They assume a paradigmatic significance, allowing the researcher to understand through what they make explicit the proper interpretation of other incidents not related with such care or at such length. It perhaps will help to call to mind once again some elements of that mosaic of attributes making up "Lynn White's St. Francis of Assisi." His sonorous phrases amply reveal the power of a new modern icon. Francis was, according to White, "the greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history since Christ," who ...tried to substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man's limitless rule of creation. He failed... Francis tried to depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God's creatures... His view of nature and man rested on a unique sort of pan-psychism of all things animate and inanimate, designed for the glorification of their transcendent Creator...9 The early Franciscans were thus "profoundly religious, but heretical ," and ...the prime miracle of St. Francis is the fact that he did not end at the stake as many of his left-wing followers did. He was so clearly heretical that a General of the Franciscan Order, St. Bonaventure , a great and perceptive Christian, tried to suppress the early accounts of Franciscanism.10 White's analysis of Bonaventure's motivation is so clearly an error arising from modern mis-interpretation that it deserves little consideration. Bonaventure's suppression of early sources through the chapter of 126611 had nothing to do with Francis' beliefs about 7 Celano, Vita Prima 59. 8 Celano, Vita Secunda 166. 9 Opinions selected from White's articles "The Historical Roots...," and "Continuing the Conversation," loc. cit. 10From "The Historical Roots," loc. cit., p. 29. 11See J. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968), pp. 246-7; St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis, ed. M. A. Habig (Chicago, 1973), pp. 209-11. 398ROGER D SORRELL nature, which lived on...