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Animal Rights History Timeline » [c485-1450] Medieval Ages » Francis Assisi

Versified Life of Saint Francis

Henri d' Avranches

Eleventh Book: How He Would Exhort All Things to Praise God and Call Them His Brethren. What His Human Appearance Was Like. How He Celebrated the Feast of Christ's Birth Represent with Special Figures.

[1232-1239] Henri d' Avranches, "How He Would Exhort All Things to Praise God and Call Them His Brethren. What His Human Appearance Was Like. How He Celebrated the Feast of Christ's Birth Represent with Special Figures," Eleventh Book in The Versified Life of Saint Francis, reprinted in Francis of Assisi, Early Documents: The Saint (New York, New City Press: 1999; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks: Online Preview).

Of virtues best, piety, is infused in his fair soul
In such wise that he bring all help to pitiable creatures,
Permitting cruel treatment nome, any savage attack
Preventing, dreading the very thought of bloodshed.…

Simple he is no less than clement; it is as though
He emitted a fragrant amber resin, a mixture
Of two elements: clement simplicity, simple clemency.
With these wings, high he soars, above the lofty stars,
Yet beneath his own self, every created thing companioning,

Leading, tutoring to climb to where true bliss lies.
Regarding things beneath him with comrade courtesy,
In the manner of Ananias, Azarias and Mizael, and conferring
The name of brother on each of the creatures,
He addresses them in dulcet tones and eagerly invites them

To proclaim the praise of the Highest Good: the heavens
And stars, sun and moon, darkness and light, seasons and years,
Shower-bearing clouds and the many-splendored rainbow,
The thunder and the lightning, the storm-clouds
And rains, the winds and winter weather, the cold and heat;

And atmosphere, circling round the world's center,
Reaching to the vault of heaven, freshening all
With its moistening, itself refreshed by all things else;
Then the winged kind and every species of bird;
The land-encircling sea, under the secret stir of the moon,

And at nature' pivot creating the whirlpool;
The scale-bearing fish and the swimming shellfish shoals,
And the poised land masses, anchored far and wide,
The heaven's courtesy keeps harnessed at fair distance;
Mountains, too, and valleys, plain and meadows, metals

And stones, and the sands that are beyond all number;
Springs and rivers, flowers and grasses, woods,
And cornfields, gardens and vineyards, and a kind
Yet nobler than all of these, and, beneath it,
The numberless creeping species, and another more energetic

Than those, the quadrupeds, some tame, some wild;
Then the human race, on which all the rest attend:
Next, distinguished in its ninefold rank, the noble host
Of heaven; and all of natures' works he calls to raise
Their eager praise to God Who first caused things to be. (Saint, 503-4)