, governed though she was by
Jacobins, and poured out their blood for her.

Clareno and his friends not only believed that Francis had been a great
Saint, but to this conviction, which was also that of the Brothers of
the Common Observance, they added the persuasion that the work of the
Stigmatized could only be continued by men who should attain to his
moral stature, to which men might arrive through the power of faith and
love. They were of the violent who take the kingdom of heaven by force;
so when, after the frivolous and senile interests of every day we come
face to face with them, we feel ourselves both humbled and exalted, for
we suddenly find unhoped-for powers, an unrecognized lyre in the human
heart.

There is one of Jesus's apostles of whom it is difficult not to think
while reading the chronicle of the Tribulations and Angelo Clareno's
correspondence: St. John. Between the apostle's words about love and
those of the Franciscan there is a similarity of style all the more
striking because they were written in different languages. In both of
these the soul is that of the aged man, where all is only love, pardon,
desire for holiness, and yet it sometimes wakes with a sudden
thrill--like that which stirred the soul of the seer of Patmos--of
indignation, wrath, pity, terror, and joy, when the future unveils
itself and gives a glimpse of the close of the great tribulation.

Clareno's works, then, are in the strictest sense of the word partisan;
the question is whether the author has designedly falsified the facts or
mutilated the texts. To this question we may boldly answer, No. He
commits errors,[14] especially in his earlier pages, but they are not
such as to diminish our confidence.

Like a good Joachimite, he believed that the Order would have to
traverse seven tribulations before its final triumph. The pontificate of
John XXII. marked, he thought, the commencement of the seventh; he set
himself, then, to write, at the request of a friend, the history of the
first six.[15]

His account of the first is naturally preceded by an introduction, the
purpose of which is to exhibit to the reader, taking the life of St.
Francis as a framework, the intention of the latter in composing the
Rule and dictating the Will.

Born between 1240 and 1250, Clareno had at his service the testimony of
several of the first disciples;[16] he found himself in relations with
Angelo di Rieti,[17] Egidio,[18] and with that Brother