I want to return now to the description of creation in the Canticle. In lines 10–22, Francis invokes the four elements—air/wind, fire, water, and earth—to praise God. Most scholars describe this passage as a depiction of the Aristotelian elements, but such a distinction implies a more philosophical stance than is likely present. Francis was not calling on the elements as a sort of proto-periodic table. The import of the four elements as building blocks of the universe was more foundational—more of a truism than anything else.25 Naming the elements does not necessarily imply philosophical contemplation of them. Modern analogies are hard to come by, but it is something like saying the earth is part of the solar system—a common fact most people assume to be true whether or not they know anything about astronomy.
Francis invokes these elements immediately after the heavenly bodies. From the twelfth century onward the view became prevalent that the heavenly bodies were not fiery bodies but rather concentrations of a fifth element—an unchangeable and perfect element fitting of heaven, whose luminosity was the result of relative density.26 If Francis was familiar with this view, which circulated during this period though not axiomatically like the rest of the four elements, then it could be possible that he saw nature in what was, in that time, a scientific manner. The evidence for such a view is rather tenuous. Some scholars believe Francis was familiar, through Brother Elias, with the basic tenets of alchemy, where many adherents did consider a fifth essence to be part and parcel of the created world.27 Evidence for Elias’s alchemical activity is sparse and indirect, however, and Francis certainly leaves no direct trace of such knowledge anywhere in his works.28 In any case, later friars themselves disagreed on the question of the fifth element. Bonaventure, in his thirteenth collation on the six days of creation, says that no one knows the truth about the substance of the heavenly bodies, though in earlier works, such as his Sentence Commentary and his Reduction of Arts to Theology, he assumes that “there are four elements and a fifth essence,” all of which can be grasped by human senses.29 Bonaventure’s contemporary Roger Bacon outlined in a variety of works an almost unquestioned assumption that the heavens were made of a fifth essence. This latter view seems to have won out (probably not thanks to Bacon), and by the early fourteenth century the biblical commentator Nicholas of Lyra can include it without justification in his discussion of creation.30
The logic of the Canticle, however, makes more sense if we consider it less as a philosophic statement on the universe than as a circular progression from the personal to the cosmic to the personal. After the initial laud given by the speaker of the poem come the heavens—the cosmos around the earth—and then the focus descends to the world itself (the four elements). The next verse is something of an anomaly. It was added later, and there is neither Sister nor Brother as its subject. Finally we move to Sister Death, the end of worldly things, who deserves a personal welcome from each of us. This is a difficult verse, since biblical sources frequently treat death as something to be conquered and hold that death is not the creation of God. It is important to remember, however, that Francis knew well he was close to death at the time of the composition of the Canticle and, I think, wanted to express that the nearness of death should not dampen one’s admiration for creation and for God. Thus, the last verses deal with human experience.
While the poem is far from a theological statement on creation, nevertheless a certain theology underpins it, namely the familial treatment of creation. Francis called members of his Order Brothers (and the Poor Clares, Sisters), and made a point of rejecting his birth family for his spiritual one. Francis clearly wanted to convey a sense of community, even family, with creation. There is a tension, then, in the poem between what I would describe as a vertical and a horizontal relationship with creation. The vertical relationship is typical of the medieval period and is expressed in how the elements (or plants, trees, and various animals) are useful to humanity. The horizontal is the more radical aspect and expresses the familial aspect of creation—humanity is no more or less a creature than anything else.
This tension is what unites the Canticle with other aspects of Francis’s relationship with nature. The horizontal relationship to nature is frequently expressed in stories of Francis and animals. The sermon to the birds, for instance, though problematic in its many versions, expresses this kinship, as do Francis’s encounters with other animals. At the same time, he did have his difficulties with animals—he saw mice as tools of the devil and called one companion Brother Fly as a rebuke to his laziness. Moreover, Francis was hardly a vegetarian and, somewhat unusually, allowed his brothers to eat meat. And while he frowned on the riding of horses by brothers, he did so not out of compassion for the animal, but because such actions did not befit the humility of the Friars Minor.31 Thus, Francis embraced the traditional vertical medieval view, but also incorporated a very personal, intense, and direct relationship with creation that stressed universality and community, where all things had their origin in God.
Francis’s concern for nature was, in the Middle Ages as it is today, one of his defining characteristics. Neslihan Şenocak has determined that Francis’s special relationship to the natural world was one of the few things many of the first couple of generations of brothers actually knew about their founder. Materials used to generate Francis’s life were not collected until 1244, and generally speaking the first brothers outside central Italy knew very little about Francis himself, outside his reputation for holiness.32 Yet one of the first brothers to reside at the nascent convent near the University of Paris, Julian of Speyer, was keen to point out Francis’s affinity for the created world:
What do you think he drank in of true knowledge, sweetness and grace in the sun, the moon, the stars and the firmament, in the elements and in their effects or embellishments? What, I ask, did he drink in when he contemplated the power, the wisdom and goodness of the Creator of all in all things? Surely, I do not think that it would be possible for any mortal to express this in words. Since he traced all things back to their one first beginning, he called every creature “brother,” and, in his own praises, continuously invited all creatures to praise their one common creator.33
Whether or not the Canticle was copied down or sung, it is at least clear that friars in the academic milieu of Paris were familiar with Francis’s special rapport with nature. It was likely, however, that most friars understood this to be a personal characteristic rather than part of the Franciscan identity—Francis’s own works seem to bolster this idea, since traditional Franciscan topics such as humility, obedience, and poverty are the cornerstones of his own writings. It is also significant that in Bonaventure’s legenda maior, which came to be the definitive life of Francis, Francis’s horizontal relationship with animals is subtly transformed into what Augustine Thompson has characterized as the prototypical “white magic” of the saints, where Francis commands nature as much as he finds fellowship in it.34 André Vauchez believes that much of this reinterpretation of Francis by Bonaventure was deliberate. Bonaventure was seeking to forestall the rending of his order by the pull between imitating Francis and serving the needs of the Church and the papacy.35