St. Francis of Assisi: He chose a greater chivalry
Founder of the Franciscan Order, born at Assisi in Umbria, in 1181 or
1182 — the exact year is uncertain; died there, 3 October, 1226.
Birth of St. Francis painted by Basilio Pacheco de Santa Cruz Pumacallao
His father, Pietro Bernardone, was a wealthy Assisian cloth merchant.
Of his mother, Pica, little is known, but she is said to have belonged
to a noble family of Provence. Francis was one of several children. The
legend that he was born in a stable dates from the fifteenth century
only, and appears to have originated in the desire of certain writers to
make his life resemble that of Christ. At baptism the saint received
the name of Giovanni, which his father afterwards altered to Francesco,
through fondness it would seem for France, whither business had led him
at the time of his son’s birth. In any case, since the child was renamed
in infancy, the change can hardly have had anything to do with his
aptitude for learning French, as some have thought.
Francis soon became the prime favorite among the young nobles of Assisi
Francis received some elementary instruction from the priests of St.
George’s at Assisi, though he learned more perhaps in the school of the
Troubadours, who were just then making for refinement in Italy. However
this may be, he was not very studious, and his literary education
remained incomplete. Although associated with his father in trade, he
showed little liking for a merchant’s career, and his parents seemed to
have indulged his every whim. Thomas of Celano, his first biographer,
speaks in very severe terms of Francis’s youth. Certain it is that the
saint’s early life gave no presage of the golden years that were to
come. No one loved pleasure more than Francis; he had a ready wit, sang
merrily, delighted in fine clothes and showy display. Handsome, gay,
gallant, and courteous, he soon became the prime favorite among the
young nobles of Assisi, the foremost in every feat of arms, the leader
of the civil revels, the very king of frolic. But even at this time
Francis showed an instinctive sympathy with the poor, and though he
spent money lavishly, it still flowed in such channels as to attest a
princely magnanimity of spirit.
Saint
Francis meets a Knight poorer than himself and Saint Francis’s vision
of the founding of the Franciscan Order. Painting by Sassetta
When about twenty, Francis went out with the townsmen to fight the
Perugians in one of the petty skirmishes so frequent at that time
between the rival cities. The Assisians were defeated on this occasion,
and Francis, being among those taken prisoners, was held captive for
more than a year in Perugia. A low fever which he there contracted
appears to have turned his thoughts to the things of eternity; at least
the emptiness of the life he had been leading came to him during that
long illness. With returning health, however, Francis’s eagerness after
glory reawakened and his fancy wandered in search of victories; at
length he resolved to embrace a military career, and circumstances
seemed to favor his aspirations. A knight of Assisi was about to join
“the gentle count”, Walter of Brienne, who was then in arms in the
Neapolitan States against the emperor, and Francis arranged to accompany
him. His biographers tell us that the night before Francis set forth he
had a strange dream, in which he saw a vast hall hung with armor all
marked with the Cross. “These”, said a voice, “are for you and your
soldiers.” “I know I shall be a great prince”, exclaimed Francis
exultingly, as he started for Apulia. But a second illness arrested his
course at Spoleto. There, we are told, Francis had another dream in
which the same voice bade him turn back to Assisi. He did so at once.
This was in 1205.
Although Francis still joined at times in the noisy revels of his
former comrades, his changed demeanor plainly showed that his heart was
no longer with them; a yearning for the life of the spirit had already
possessed it. His companions twitted Francis on his absent-mindedness
and asked if he were minded to be married. “Yes”, he replied, “I am
about to take a wife of surpassing fairness.” She was no other than Lady
Poverty whom Dante and Giotto have wedded to his name, and whom even
now he had begun to love. After a short period of uncertainty he began
to seek in prayer and solitude the answer to his call; he had already
given up his gay attire and wasteful ways. One day, while crossing the
Umbrian plain on horseback, Francis unexpectedly drew near a poor leper.
The sudden appearance of this repulsive object filled him with disgust
and he instinctively retreated, but presently controlling his natural
aversion he dismounted, embraced the unfortunate man, and gave him all
the money he had. About the same time Francis made a pilgrimage to Rome.
Pained at the miserly offerings he saw at the tomb of St. Peter, he
emptied his purse thereon. Then, as if to put his fastidious nature to
the test, he exchanged clothes with a tattered mendicant and stood for
the rest of the day fasting among the horde of beggars at the door of
the basilica.
St Francis, Renunciation of Wordly Goods, by Giotto di Bondone
Not long after his return to Assisi, whilst Francis was praying
before an ancient crucifix in the forsaken wayside chapel of St.
Damian’s below the town, he heard a voice saying: “Go, Francis, and
repair my house, which as you see is falling into ruin.” Taking this
behest literally, as referring to the ruinous church wherein he knelt,
Francis went to his father’s shop, impulsively bundled together a load
of colored drapery, and mounting his horse hastened to Foligno, then a
mart of some importance, and there sold both horse and stuff to procure
the money needful for the restoration of St. Damian’s. When, however,
the poor priest who officiated there refused to receive the gold thus
gotten, Francis flung it from him disdainfully. The elder Bernardone, a
most niggardly man, was incensed beyond measure at his son’s conduct,
and Francis, to avert his father’s wrath, hid himself in a cave near St.
Damian’s for a whole month. When he emerged from this place of
concealment and returned to the town, emaciated with hunger and squalid
with dirt, Francis was followed by a hooting rabble, pelted with mud and
stones, and otherwise mocked as a madman. Finally, he was dragged home
by his father, beaten, bound, and locked in a dark closet.
Freed by his mother during Bernardone’s absence, Francis returned at
once to St. Damian’s, where he found a shelter with the officiating
priest, but he was soon cited before the city consuls by his father. The
latter, not content with having recovered the scattered gold from St.
Damian’s, sought also to force his son to forego his inheritance. This
Francis was only too eager to do; he declared, however, that since he
had entered the service of God he was no longer under civil
jurisdiction. Having therefore been taken before the bishop, Francis
stripped himself of the very clothes he wore, and gave them to his
father, saying: “Hitherto I have called you my father on earth;
henceforth I desire to say only ‘Our Father who art in Heaven.’” Then
and there, as Dante sings, were solemnized Francis’s nuptials with his
beloved spouse, the Lady Poverty, under which name, in the mystical
language afterwards so familiar to him, he comprehended the total
surrender of all worldly goods, honors, and privileges. And now Francis
wandered forth into the hills behind Assisi, improvising hymns of praise
as he went. “I am the herald of the great King”, he declared in answer
to some robbers, who thereupon despoiled him of all he had and threw him
scornfully in a snow drift. Naked and half frozen, Francis crawled to a
neighboring monastery and there worked for a time as a scullion. At
Gubbio, whither he went next, Francis obtained from a friend the cloak,
girdle, and staff of a pilgrim as an alms. Returning to Assisi, he
traversed the city begging stones for the restoration of St. Damian’s.
These he carried to the old chapel, set in place himself, and so at
length rebuilt it. In the same way Francis afterwards restored two other
deserted chapels, St. Peter’s, some distance from the city, and St.
Mary of the Angels, in the plain below it, at a spot called the
Porziuncola. Meantime he redoubled his zeal in works of charity, more
especially in nursing the lepers.
The courtyard of the Convent of San Damiano, Assisi
On a certain morning in 1208, probably 24 February, Francis was
hearing Mass in the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, near which he had
then built himself a hut; the Gospel of the day told how the disciples
of Christ were to possess neither gold nor silver, nor scrip for their
journey, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor a staff, and that they were to
exhort sinners to repentance and announce the Kingdom of God. Francis
took these words as if spoken directly to himself, and so soon as Mass
was over threw away the poor fragment left him of the world’s goods, his
shoes, cloak, pilgrim staff, and empty wallet.
At last he had found his vocation. Having obtained a coarse woolen
tunic of “beast color”, the dress then worn by the poorest Umbrian
peasants, and tied it round him with a knotted rope, Francis went forth
at once exhorting the people of the country-side to penance, brotherly
love, and peace. The Assisians had already ceased to scoff at Francis;
they now paused in wonderment; his example even drew others to him.
Bernard of Quintavalle, a magnate of the town, was the first to join
Francis, and he was soon followed by Peter of Cattaneo, a well-known
canon of the cathedral. In true spirit of religious enthusiasm, Francis
repaired to the church of St. Nicholas and sought to learn God’s will in
their regard by thrice opening at random the book of the Gospels on the
altar. Each time it opened at passages where Christ told His disciples
to leave all things and follow Him. “This shall be our rule of life”,
exclaimed Francis, and led his companions to the public square, where
they forthwith gave away all their belongings to the poor. After this
they procured rough habits like that of Francis, and built themselves
small huts near his at the Porziuncola. A few days later Giles,
afterwards the great ecstatic and sayer of “good words”, became the
third follower of Francis. The little band divided and went about, two
and two, making such an impression by their words and behavior that
before long several other disciples grouped themselves round Francis
eager to share his poverty, among them being Sabatinus,
vir bonus et justus,
Moricus, who had belonged to the Crucigeri, John of Capella, who
afterwards fell away, Philip “the Long”, and four others of whom we know
only the names.
“Go, Francis, and repair my house, which as you see is falling into ruin.”
When the number of his companions had increased to eleven, Francis
found it expedient to draw up a written rule for them. This first rule,
as it is called, of the Friars Minor has not come down to us in its
original form, but it appears to have been very short and simple, a mere
adaptation of the Gospel precepts already selected by Francis for the
guidance of his first companions, and which he desired to practice in
all their perfection. When this rule was ready the Penitents of Assisi,
as Francis and his followers styled themselves, set out for Rome to seek
the approval of the Holy See, although as yet no such approbation was
obligatory. There are differing accounts of Francis’s reception by
Innocent III. It seems, however, that Guido, Bishop of Assisi, who was
then in Rome, commended Francis to Cardinal John of St. Paul, and that
at the instance of the latter, the pope recalled the saint whose first
overtures he had, as it appears, somewhat rudely rejected. Moreover, in
site of the sinister predictions of others in the Sacred College, who
regarded the mode of life proposed by Francis as unsafe and
impracticable, Innocent, moved it is said by a dream in which he beheld
the Poor Man of Assisi upholding the tottering Lateran, gave a verbal
sanction to the rule submitted by Francis and granted the saint and his
companions leave to preach repentance everywhere. Before leaving Rome
they all received the ecclesiastical tonsure, Francis himself being
ordained deacon later on.
After their return to Assisi, the Friars Minor — for thus Francis had named his brethren, either after the
minores,
or lower classes, as some think, or as others believe, with reference
to the Gospel (Matthew 25:40-45), and as a perpetual reminder of their
humility — found shelter in a deserted hut at Rivo Torto in the plain
below the city, but were forced to abandon this poor abode by a rough
peasant who drove in his ass upon them. About 1211 they obtained a
permanent foothold near Assisi, through the generosity of the
Benedictines of Monte Subasio, who gave them the little chapel of St.
Mary of the Angels or the Porziuncola. Adjoining this humble sanctuary,
already dear to Francis, the first Franciscan convent was formed by the
erection of a few small huts or cells of wattle, straw, and mud, and
enclosed by a hedge. From this settlement, which became the cradle of
the Franciscan Order (
Caput et Mater Ordinis) and the central
spot in the life of St. Francis, the Friars Minor went forth two by two
exhorting the people of the surrounding country. Like children “careless
of the day”, they wandered from place to place singing in their joy,
and calling themselves the Lord’s minstrels. The wide world was their
cloister; sleeping in haylofts, grottos, or church porches, they toiled
with the laborers in the fields, and when none gave them work they would
beg. In a short while Francis and his companions gained an immense
influence, and men of different grades of life and ways of thought
flocked to the order. Among the new recruits made about this time By
Francis were the famous Three Companions, who afterwards wrote his life,
namely: Angelus Tancredi, a noble cavalier; Leo, the saint’s secretary
and confessor; and Rufinus, a cousin of St. Clare; besides Juniper, “the
renowned jester of the Lord”.
Apparition of St Francis at Arles by Blessed Fra Angelico
During the Lent of 1212, a new joy, great as it was unexpected, came
to Francis. Clare, a young heiress of Assisi, moved by the saint’s
preaching at the church of St. George, sought him out, and begged to be
allowed to embrace the new manner of life he had founded. By his advice,
Clare, who was then but eighteen, secretly left her father’s house on
the night following Palm Sunday, and with two companions went to the
Porziuncola, where the friars met her in procession, carrying lighted
torches. Then Francis, having cut off her hair, clothed her in the
Minorite habit and thus received her to a life of poverty, penance, and
seclusion. Clare stayed provisionally with some Benedictine nuns near
Assisi, until Francis could provide a suitable retreat for her, and for
St. Agnes, her sister, and the other pious maidens who had joined her.
He eventually established them at St. Damian’s, in a dwelling adjoining
the chapel he had rebuilt with his own hands, which was now given to the
saint by the Benedictines as domicile for his spiritual daughters, and
which thus became the first monastery of the Second Franciscan Order of
Poor Ladies, now known as Poor Clares.
St.
Francis receives St. Clare, a young noblewoman of Assisi, into a life
of poverty, as depicted in Sacro Monte di Orta in Orta San Giulio,
Piedmont.
In the autumn of the same year (1212) Francis’s burning desire for
the conversion of the Saracens led him to embark for Syria, but having
been shipwrecked on the coast of Slavonia, he had to return to Ancona.
The following spring he devoted himself to evangelizing Central Italy.
About this time (1213) Francis received from Count Orlando of Chiusi the
mountain of La Verna, an isolated peak among the Tuscan Apennines,
rising some 4000 feet above the valley of the Casentino, as a retreat,
“especially favorable for contemplation”, to which he might retire from
time to time for prayer and rest. For Francis never altogether separated
the contemplative from the active life, as the several hermitages
associated with his memory, and the quaint regulations he wrote for
those living in them bear witness. At one time, indeed, a strong desire
to give himself wholly to a life of contemplation seems to have
possessed the saint. During the next year (1214) Francis set out for
Morocco, in another attempt to reach the infidels and, if needs be, to
shed his blood for the Gospel, but while yet in Spain was overtaken by
so severe an illness that he was compelled to turn back to Italy once
more.
Authentic details are unfortunately lacking of Francis’s journey to
Spain and sojourn there. It probably took place in the winter of
1214-1215. After his return to Umbria he received several noble and
learned men into his order, including his future biographer Thomas of
Celano. The next eighteen months comprise, perhaps, the most obscure
period of the saint’s life. That he took part in the Lateran Council of
1215 may well be, but it is not certain; we know from Eccleston,
however, that Francis was present at the death of Innocent III, which
took place at Perugia, in July 1216.
St. Francis by Wenzel Hollar
The first general chapter of the Friars Minor was held in May, 1217,
at Porziuncola, the order being divided into provinces, and an
apportionment made of the Christian world into so many Franciscan
missions. Tuscany, Lombardy, Provence, Spain, and Germany were assigned
to five of Francis’s principal followers; for himself the saint reserved
France, and he actually set out for that kingdom, but on arriving at
Florence, was dissuaded from going further by Cardinal Ugolino, who had
been made protector of the order in 1216. He therefore sent in his stead
Brother Pacificus, who in the world had been renowned as a poet,
together with Brother Agnellus, who later on established the Friars
Minor in England. Although success came indeed to Francis and his
friars, with it came also opposition, and it was with a view to allaying
any prejudices the Curia might have imbibed against their methods that
Francis, at the instance of Cardinal Ugolino, went to Rome and preached
before the pope and cardinals in the Lateran. This visit to the Eternal
City, which took place 1217-18, was apparently the occasion of Francis’s
memorable meeting with St. Dominic.
Meeting of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic as painted by Blessed Fra Angelico
The year 1218 Francis devoted to missionary tours in Italy, which
were a continual triumph for him. He usually preached out of doors, in
the market-places, from church steps, from the walls of castle
court-yards. Allured by the magic spell of his presence, admiring
crowds, unused for the rest to anything like popular preaching in the
vernacular, followed Francis from place to place hanging on his lips;
church bells rang at his approach; processions of clergy and people
advanced to meet him with music and singing; they brought the sick to
him to bless and heal, and kissed the very ground on which he trod, and
even sought to cut away pieces of his tunic. The extraordinary
enthusiasm with which the saint was everywhere welcomed was equaled only
by the immediate and visible result of his preaching. His exhortations
of the people, for sermons they can hardly be called, short, homely,
affectionate, and pathetic, touched even the hardest and most frivolous,
and Francis became in sooth a very conqueror of souls.
Crowds joyfully receive Saint Francis, as depicted at the Sacro Monte di Orta in Orta San Giulio, Piedmont.
Thus it happened, on one occasion, while the saint was preaching at
Camara, a small village near Assisi, that the whole congregation were so
moved by his “words of spirit and life” that they presented themselves
to him in a body and begged to be admitted into his order. It was to
accede, so far as might be, to like requests that Francis devised his
Third Order, as it is now called, of the Brothers and Sisters of
Penance, which he intended as a sort of middle state between the world
and the cloister for those who could not leave their home or desert
their wonted avocations in order to enter either the First Order of
Friars Minor or the Second Order of Poor Ladies. That Francis prescribed
particular duties for these tertiaries is beyond question. They were
not to carry arms, or take oaths, or engage in lawsuits, etc. It is also
said that he drew up a formal rule for them, but it is clear that the
rule, confirmed by Nicholas IV in 1289, does not, at least in the form
in which it has come down to us, represent the original rule of the
Brothers and Sisters of Penance. In any event, it is customary to assign
1221 as the year of the foundation of this third order, but the date is
not certain.
At the second general chapter (May, 1219) Francis, bent on realizing
his project of evangelizing the infidels, assigned a separate mission to
each of his foremost disciples, himself selecting the seat of war
between the crusaders and the Saracens. With eleven companions,
including Brother Illuminato and Peter of Cattaneo, Francis set sail
from Ancona on 21 June, for Saint-Jean d’Acre, and he was present at the
siege and taking of Damietta. After preaching there to the assembled
Christian forces, Francis fearlessly passed over to the infidel camp,
where he was taken prisoner and led before the sultan.
Frisian crusaders attack the tower of Damietta in a painting by Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen.
According to the testimony of Jacques de Vitry, who was with the
crusaders at Damietta, the sultan received Francis with courtesy, but
beyond obtaining a promise from this ruler of more indulgent treatment
for the Christian captives, the saint’s preaching seems to have effected
little. Before returning to Europe, the saint is believed to have
visited Palestine and there obtained for the friars the foothold they
still retain as guardians of the holy places.
What is certain is that Francis was compelled to hasten back to Italy
because of various troubles that had arisen there during his absence.
News had reached him in the East that Matthew of Narni and Gregory of
Naples, the two vicars-general whom he had left in charge of the order,
had summoned a chapter which, among other innovations, sought to impose
new fasts upon the friars, more severe than the rule required. Moreover,
Cardinal Ugolino had conferred on the Poor Ladies a written rule which
was practically that of the Benedictine nuns, and Brother Philip, whom
Francis had charged with their interests, had accepted it. To make
matters worse, John of Capella, one of the saint’s first companions, had
assembled a large number of lepers, both men and women, with a view to
forming them into a new religious order, and had set out for Rome to
seek approval for the rule he had drawn up for these unfortunates.
Finally a rumor had been spread abroad that Francis was dead, so that
when the saint returned to Italy with brother Elias — he appeared to
have arrived at Venice in July, 1220 — a general feeling of unrest
prevailed among the friars. Apart from these difficulties, the order was
then passing through a period of transition.
St. Francis before the Sultan
It had become evident that the simple, familiar, and unceremonious
ways which had marked the Franciscan movement at its beginning were
gradually disappearing, and that the heroic poverty practiced by Francis
and his companions at the outset became less easy as the friars with
amazing rapidity increased in number. And this Francis could not help
seeing on his return. Cardinal Ugolino had already undertaken the task
“of reconciling inspirations so unstudied and so free with an order of
things they had outgrown.” This remarkable man, who afterwards ascended
the papal throne as Gregory IX, was deeply attached to Francis, whom he
venerated as a saint and also, some writers tell us, managed as an
enthusiast. That Cardinal Ugolino had no small share in bringing
Francis’s lofty ideals “within range and compass” seems beyond dispute,
and it is not difficult to recognize his hand in the important changes
made in the organization of the order in the so-called Chapter of Mats.
At this famous assembly, held at Porziuncola at Whitsuntide, 1220 or
1221 (there is seemingly much room for doubt as to the exact date and
number of the early chapters), about 5000 friars are said to have been
present, besides some 500 applicants for admission to the order. Huts of
wattle and mud afforded shelter for this multitude. Francis had
purposely made no provision for them, but the charity of the neighboring
towns supplied them with food, while knights and nobles waited upon
them gladly.
Assisi seen from Monte Subasio
It was on this occasion that Francis, harassed no doubt and
disheartened at the tendency betrayed by a large number of the friars to
relax the rigors of the rule, according to the promptings of human
prudence, and feeling, perhaps unfitted for a place which now called
largely for organizing abilities, relinquished his position as general
of the order in favor of Peter of Cattaneo. But the latter died in less
than a year, being succeeded as vicar-general by the unhappy Brother
Elias, who continued in that office until the death of Francis. The
saint, meanwhile, during the few years that remained in him, sought to
impress on the friars by the silent teaching of personal example of what
sort he would fain have them to be. Already, while passing through
Bologna on his return from the East, Francis had refused to enter the
convent there because he had heard it called the “House of the Friars”
and because a
studium had been instituted there. He moreover
bade all the friars, even those who were ill, quit it at once, and it
was only some time after, when Cardinal Ugolino had publicly declared
the house to be his own property, that Francis suffered his brethren to
re-enter it. Yet strong and definite as the saint’s convictions were,
and determinedly as his line was taken, he was never a slave to a theory
in regard to the observances of poverty or anything else; about him
indeed, there was nothing narrow or fanatical. As for his attitude
towards study, Francis desired for his friars only such theological
knowledge as was conformable to the mission of the order, which was
before all else a mission of example. Hence he regarded the accumulation
of books as being at variance with the poverty his friars professed,
and he resisted the eager desire for mere book-learning, so prevalent in
his time, in so far as it struck at the roots of that simplicity which
entered so largely into the essence of his life and ideal and threatened
to stifle the spirit of prayer, which he accounted preferable to all
the rest.
In 1221, so some writers tell us, Francis drew up a new rule for the
Friars Minor. Others regard this so-called Rule of 1221 not as a new
rule, but as the first one which Innocent had orally approved; not,
indeed, its original form, which we do not possess, but with such
additions and modifications as it has suffered during the course of
twelve years. However this may be, the composition called by some the
Rule of 1221 is very unlike any conventional rule ever made. It was too
lengthy and unprecise to become a formal rule, and two years later
Francis retired to Fonte Colombo, a hermitage near Rieti, and rewrote
the rule in more compendious form. This revised draft he entrusted to
Brother Elias, who not long after declared he had lost it through
negligence. Francis thereupon returned to the solitude of Fonte Colombo,
and recast the rule on the same lines as before, its twenty-three
chapters being reduced to twelve and some of its precepts being modified
in certain details at the instance of Cardinal Ugolino. In this form
the rule was solemnly approved by Honorius III, 29 November, 1223 (Litt.
“Solet annuere”). This Second Rule, as it is usually called or
Regula Bullata
of the Friars Minor, is the one ever since professed throughout the
First Order of St. Francis. It is based on the three vows of obedience,
poverty, and chastity, special stress however being laid on poverty,
which Francis sought to make the special characteristic of his order,
and which became the sign to be contradicted. This vow of absolute
poverty in the first and second orders and the reconciliation of the
religious with the secular state in the Third Order of Penance are the
chief novelties introduced by Francis in monastic regulation.
St Francis, Institution of the Crib at Greccio, by Giotto di Bondone
It was during Christmastide of this year (1223) that the saint
conceived the idea of celebrating the Nativity “in a new manner”, by
reproducing in a church at Greccio the
praesepio of Bethlehem,
and he has thus come to be regarded as having inaugurated the population
devotion of the Crib. Christmas appears indeed to have been the
favorite feast of Francis, and he wished to persuade the emperor to make
a special law that men should then provide well for the birds and the
beasts, as well as for the poor, so that all might have occasion to
rejoice in the Lord.
Early in August, 1224, Francis retired with three companions to “that
rugged rock ‘twixt Tiber and Arno”, as Dante called La Verna, there to
keep a forty days fast in preparation for Michaelmas. During this
retreat the sufferings of Christ became more than ever the burden of his
meditations; into few souls, perhaps, had the full meaning of the
Passion so deeply entered. It was on or about the feast of the
Exaltation of the Cross (14 September) while praying on the
mountainside, that he beheld the marvelous vision of the seraph, as a
sequel of which there appeared on his body the visible marks of the five
wounds of the Crucified which, says an early writer, had long since
been impressed upon his heart. Brother Leo, who was with St. Francis
when he received the stigmata, has left us in his note to the saint’s
autograph blessing, preserved at Assisi, a clear and simple account of
the miracle, which for the rest is better attested than many another
historical fact.
The Stigmatization of Saint Francis, by Rubens
The saint’s right side is described as bearing on open wound which
looked as if made by a lance, while through his hands and feet were
black nails of flesh, the points of which were bent backward. After the
reception of the stigmata, Francis suffered increasing pains throughout
his frail body, already broken by continual mortification. For,
condescending as the saint always was to the weaknesses of others, he
was ever so unsparing towards himself that at the last he felt
constrained to ask pardon of “Brother Ass”, as he called his body, for
having treated it so harshly. Worn out, moreover, as Francis now was by
eighteen years of unremitting toil, his strength gave way completely,
and at times his eyesight so far failed him that he was almost wholly
blind. During an access of anguish, Francis paid a last visit to St.
Clare at St. Damian’s, and it was in a little hut of reeds, made for him
in the garden there, that the saint composed that “Canticle of the
Sun”, in which his poetic genius expands itself so gloriously. This was
in September, 1225. Not long afterwards Francis, at the urgent instance
of Brother Elias, underwent an unsuccessful operation for the eyes, at
Rieti. He seems to have passed the winter 1225-26 at Siena, whither he
had been taken for further medical treatment.
In April, 1226, during an interval of improvement, Francis was moved
to Cortona, and it is believed to have been while resting at the
hermitage of the Celle there, that the saint dictated his testament,
which he describes as a “reminder, a warning, and an exhortation”. In
this touching document Francis, writing from the fullness of his heart,
urges anew with the simple eloquence, the few, but clearly defined,
principles that were to guide his followers, implicit obedience to
superiors as holding the place of God, literal observance of the rule
“without gloss”, especially as regards poverty, and the duty of manual
labor, being solemnly enjoined on all the friars. Meanwhile alarming
dropsical symptoms had developed, and it was in a dying condition that
Francis set out for Assisi. A roundabout route was taken by the little
caravan that escorted him, for it was feared to follow the direct road
lest the saucy Perugians should attempt to carry Francis off by force so
that he might die in their city, which would thus enter into possession
of his coveted relics. It was therefore under a strong guard that
Francis, in July, 1226, was finally borne in safety to the bishop’s
palace in his native city amid the enthusiastic rejoicings of the entire
populace.
Death of St. Francis. – Évora, Portugal, Igreja de São Francisco.
In the early autumn Francis, feeling the hand of death upon him, was
carried to his beloved Porziuncola, that he might breathe his last sigh
where his vocation had been revealed to him and whence his order had
struggled into sight. On the way thither he asked to be set down, and
with painful effort he invoked a beautiful blessing on Assisi, which,
however, his eyes could no longer discern. The saint’s last days were
passed at the Porziuncola in a tiny hut, near the chapel, that served as
an infirmary. The arrival there about this time of the Lady Jacoba of
Settesoli, who had come with her two sons and a great retinue to bid
Francis farewell, caused some consternation, since women were forbidden
to enter the friary. But Francis in his tender gratitude to this Roman
noblewoman, made an exception in her favor, and “Brother Jacoba”, as
Francis had named her on account of her fortitude, remained to the last.
On the eve of his death, the saint, in imitation of his Divine Master,
had bread brought to him and broken. This he distributed among those
present, blessing Bernard of Quintaville, his first companion, Elias,
his vicar, and all the others in order. “I have done my part,” he said
next, “may Christ teach you to do yours.” Then wishing to give a last
token of detachment and to show he no longer had anything in common with
the world, Francis removed his poor habit and lay down on the bare
ground, covered with a borrowed cloth, rejoicing that he was able to
keep faith with his Lady Poverty to the end. After a while he asked to
have read to him the Passion according to St. John, and then in
faltering tones he himself intoned Psalm cxli. At the concluding verse,
“Bring my soul out of prison”, Francis was led away from earth by
“Sister Death”, in whose praise he had shortly before added a new
strophe to his “Canticle of the Sun”. It was Saturday evening, 3
October, 1226, Francis being then in the forty-fifth year of his age,
and the twentieth from his perfect conversion to Christ.
The saint had, in his humility, it is said, expressed a wish to be
buried on the Colle d’Inferno, a despised hill without Assisi, where
criminals were executed. However this may be, his body was, on 4
October, borne in triumphant procession to the city, a halt being made
at St. Damian’s, that St. Clare and her companions might venerate the
sacred stigmata now visible to all, and it was placed provisionally in
the church of St. George (now within the enclosure of the monastery of
St. Clare), where the saint had learned to read and had first preached.
Many miracles are recorded to have taken place at his tomb. Francis was
canonized at St. George’s by Gregory IX, 16 July, 1228. On that day
following the pope laid the first stone of the great double church of
St. Francis, erected in honor of the new saint, and thither on 25 May,
1230, Francis’s remains were secretly transferred by Brother Elias and
buried far down under the high altar in the lower church. Here, after
lying hidden for six centuries, like that of St. Clare’s, Francis’s
coffin was found, 12 December, 1818, as a result of a toilsome search
lasting fifty-two nights. This discovery of the saint’s body is
commemorated in the order by a special office on 12 December, and that
of his translation by another on 25 May. His feast is kept throughout
the Church on 4 October, and the impression of the stigmata on his body
is celebrated on 17 September.
St Francis by Cigoli
It has been said with pardonable warmth that Francis entered into
glory in his lifetime, and that he is the one saint whom all succeeding
generations have agreed in canonizing. Certain it is that those also who
care little about the order he founded, and who have but scant sympathy
with the Church to which he ever gave his devout allegiance, even those
who know that Christianity to be Divine, find themselves, instinctively
as it were, looking across the ages for guidance to the wonderful
Umbrian Poverello, and invoking his name in grateful remembrance. This
unique position Francis doubtless owes in no small measure to his
singularly lovable and winsome personality. Few saints ever exhaled “the
good odour of Christ” to such a degree as he.
There was about Francis, moreover, a chivalry and a poetry which gave
to his other-worldliness a quite romantic charm and beauty. Other
saints have seemed entirely dead to the world around them, but Francis
was ever thoroughly in touch with the spirit of the age. He delighted in
the songs of Provence, rejoiced in the new-born freedom of his native
city, and cherished what Dante calls the pleasant sound of his dear
land. And this exquisite human element in Francis’s character was the
key to that far-reaching, all-embracing sympathy, which may be almost
called his characteristic gift. In his heart, as an old chronicler puts
it, the whole world found refuge, the poor, the sick and the fallen
being the objects of his solicitude in a more special manner.
Heedless as Francis ever was of the world’s judgments in his own
regard, it was always his constant care to respect the opinions of all
and to wound the feelings of none. Wherefore he admonishes the friars to
use only low and mean tables, so that “if a beggar were to come to sit
down near them he might believe that he was but with his equals and need
not blush on account of his poverty.” One night, we are told, the
friary was aroused by the cry “I am dying.” “Who are you”, exclaimed
Francis arising, “and why are dying?” “I am dying of hunger”, answered
the voice of one who had been too prone to fasting. Whereupon Francis
had a table laid out and sat down beside the famished friar, and lest
the latter might be ashamed to eat alone, ordered all the other brethren
to join in the repast.
Statue of Saint Francis in the Parish church of St. Ulrich in Gröden – Ortisei
Francis’s devotedness in consoling the afflicted made him so
condescending that he shrank not from abiding with the lepers in their
loathly lazar-houses and from eating with them out of the same platter.
But above all it is his dealings with the erring that reveal the truly
Christian spirit of his charity. “Saintlier than any of the saint”,
writes Celano, “among sinners he was as one of themselves”. Writing to a
certain minister in the order, Francis says: “Should there be a brother
anywhere in the world who has sinned, no matter how great soever his
fault may be, let him not go away after he has once seen thy face
without showing pity towards him; and if he seek not mercy, ask him if
he does not desire it. And by this I will know if you love God and me.”
Painting of St. Francis by Giovanni Da Milano
Again, to medieval notions of justice the evil-doer was beyond the
law and there was no need to keep faith with him. But according to
Francis, not only was justice due even to evil-doers, but justice must
be preceded by courtesy as by a herald. Courtesy, indeed, in the saint’s
quaint concept, was the younger sister of charity and one of the
qualities of God Himself, Who “of His courtesy”, he declares, “gives His
sun and His rain to the just and the unjust”.
This habit of courtesy Francis ever sought to enjoin on his
disciples. “Whoever may come to us”, he writes, “whether a friend or a
foe, a thief or a robber, let him be kindly received”, and the feast
which he spread for the starving brigands in the forest at Monte Casale
sufficed to show that “as he taught so he wrought”. The very animals
found in Francis a tender friend and protector; thus we find him
pleading with the people of Gubbio to feed the fierce wolf that had
ravished their flocks, because through hunger “Brother Wolf” had done
this wrong. And the early legends have left us many an idyllic picture
of how beasts and birds alike susceptible to the charm of Francis’s
gentle ways, entered into loving companionship with him; how the hunted
leveret sought to attract his notice; how the half-frozen bees crawled
towards him in the winter to be fed; how the wild falcon fluttered
around him; how the nightingale sang with him in sweetest content in the
ilex grove at the Carceri, and how his “little brethren the birds”
listened so devoutly to his sermon by the roadside near Bevagna that
Francis chided himself for not having thought of preaching to them
before. Francis’s love of nature also stands out in bold relief in the
world he moved in. He delighted to commune with the wild flowers, the
crystal spring, and the friendly fire, and to greet the sun as it rose
upon the fair Umbrian vale. In this respect, indeed, St. Francis’s “gift
of sympathy” seems to have been wider even than St. Paul’s, for we find
no evidence in the great Apostle of a love for nature or for animals.
Hardly less engaging than his boundless sense of fellow-feeling was
Francis’s downright sincerity and artless simplicity. “Dearly beloved,”
he once began a sermon following upon a severe illness, “I have to
confess to God and you that during this Lent I have eaten cakes made
with lard.” And when the guardian insisted for the sake of warmth upon
Francis having a fox skin sewn under his worn-out tunic, the saint
consented only upon condition that another skin of the same size be sewn
outside. For it was his singular study never to hide from men that
which known to God. “What a man is in the sight of God,” he was wont to
repeat, “so much he is and no more” — a saying which passed into the
“Imitation”, and has been often quoted.
Another winning trait of Francis which inspires the deepest affection
was his unswerving directness of purpose and unfaltering following
after an ideal. “His dearest desire so long as he lived”, Celano tells
us, “was ever to seek among wise and simple, perfect and imperfect, the
means to walk in the way of truth.” To Francis love was the truest of
all truths; hence his deep sense of personal responsibility towards his
fellows. The love of Christ and Him Crucified permeated the whole life
and character of Francis, and he placed the chief hope of redemption and
redress for a suffering humanity in the literal imitation of his Divine
Master. The saint imitated the example of Christ as literally as it was
in him to do so; barefoot, and in absolute poverty, he proclaimed the
reign of love. This heroic imitation of Christ’s poverty was perhaps the
distinctive mark of Francis’s vocation, and he was undoubtedly, as
Bossuet expresses it, the most ardent, enthusiastic, and desperate lover
of poverty the world has yet seen.
After money Francis most detested discord and divisions. Peace,
therefore, became his watchword, and the pathetic reconciliation he
effected in his last days between the Bishop and Potesta of Assisi is
bit one instance out of many of his power to quell the storms of passion
and restore tranquility to hearts torn asunder by civil strife. The
duty of a servant of God, Francis declared, was to lift up the hearts of
men and move them to spiritual gladness. Hence it was not “from
monastic stalls or with the careful irresponsibility of the enclosed
student” that the saint and his followers addressed the people” “they
dwelt among them and grappled with the evils of the system under which
the people groaned”. They worked in return for their fare, doing for the
lowest the most menial labor, and speaking to the poorest words of hope
such as the world had not heard for many a day. In this wise Francis
bridged the chasm between an aristocratic clergy and the common people,
and though he taught no new doctrine, he so far repopularized the old
one given on the Mount that the Gospel took on a new life and called
forth a new love.
Tiles outside Saint Francis of Assisi Church, Coyoacan, Federal District, Mexico
Such in briefest outline are some of the salient features which
render the figure of Francis one of such supreme attraction that all
manner of men feel themselves drawn towards him, with a sense of
personal attachment. Few, however, of those who feel the charm of
Francis’s personality may follow the saint to his lonely height of rapt
communion with God. For, however engaging a “minstrel of the Lord”,
Francis was none the less a profound mystic in the truest sense of the
word. The whole world was to him one luminous ladder, mounting upon the
rungs of which he approached and beheld God. It is very misleading,
however, to portray Francis as living “at a height where dogma ceases to
exist”, and still further from the truth to represent the trend of his
teaching as one in which orthodoxy is made subservient to
“humanitarianism”. A very cursory inquiry into Francis’s religious
belief suffices to show that it embraced the entire Catholic dogma,
nothing more or less. If then the saint’s sermons were on the whole
moral rather than doctrinal, it was less because he preached to meet the
wants of his day, and those whom he addressed had not strayed from
dogmatic truth; they were still “hearers”, if not “doers”, of the Word.
For this reason Francis set aside all questions more theoretical than
practical, and returned to the Gospel.
Again, to see in Francis only the loving friend of all God’s
creatures, the joyous singer of nature, is to overlook altogether that
aspect of his work which is the explanation of all the rest — its
supernatural side. Few lives have been more wholly imbued with the
supernatural, as even Renan admits. Nowhere, perhaps, can there be found
a keener insight into the innermost world of spirit, yet so closely
were the supernatural and the natural blended in Francis, that his very
asceticism was often clothed in the guide of romance, as witness his
wooing the Lady Poverty, in a sense that almost ceased to be figurative.
For Francis’s singularly vivid imagination was impregnate with the
imagery of the
chanson de geste, and owing to his markedly
dramatic tendency, he delighted in suiting his action to his thought.
So, too, the saint’s native turn for the picturesque led him to unite
religion and nature. He found in all created things, however trivial,
some reflection of the Divine perfection, and he loved to admire in them
the beauty, power, wisdom, and goodness of their Creator. And so it
came to pass that he saw sermons even in stones, and good in everything.
Moreover, Francis’s simple, childlike nature fastened on the thought,
that if all are from one Father then all are real kin. Hence his custom
of claiming brotherhood with all manner of animate and inanimate
objects. The personification, therefore, of the elements in the
“Canticle of the Sun” is something more than a mere literary figure.
Francis’s love of creatures was not simply the offspring of a soft or
sentimental disposition; it arose rather from that deep and abiding
sense of the presence of God, which underlay all he said and did.
The
coronation of Saint Francis by the Holy Trinity, Sacro Monte ( Orta ).
Chapel 20: Fresco ( 1670 ) by Antonio Busca. Photo by Wolfgang Sauber
Even so, Francis’s habitual cheerfulness was not that of a careless
nature, or of one untouched by sorrow. None witnessed Francis’s hidden
struggles, his long agonies of tears, or his secret wrestlings in
prayer. And if we meet him making dumb-show of music, by playing a
couple of sticks like a violin to give vent to his glee, we also find
him heart-sore with foreboding at the dire dissensions in the order
which threatened to make shipwreck of his ideal. Nor were temptations or
other weakening maladies of the soul wanting to the saint at any time.
Francis’s lightsomeness had its source in that entire surrender of
everything present and passing, in which he had found the interior
liberty of the children of God; it drew its strength from his intimate
union with Jesus in the Holy Communion. The mystery of the Holy
Eucharist, being an extension of the Passion, held a preponderant place
in the life of Francis, and he had nothing more at heart than all that
concerned the cultus of the Blessed Sacrament. Hence we not only hear of
Francis conjuring the clergy to show befitting respect for everything
connected with the Sacrifice of the Mass, but we also see him sweeping
out poor churches, questing sacred vessels for them, and providing them
with altar-breads made by himself. So great, indeed, was Francis’s
reverence for the priesthood, because of its relation to the Adorable
Sacrament, that in his humility he never dared to aspire to that
dignity. Humility was, no doubt, the saint’s ruling virtue. The idol of
an enthusiastic popular devotion, he ever truly believed himself less
than the least. Equally admirable was Francis’s prompt and docile
obedience to the voice of grace within him, even in the early days of
his ill-defined ambition, when the spirit of interpretation failed him.
Later on, the saint, with as clear as a sense of his message as any
prophet ever had, yielded ungrudging submission to what constituted
ecclesiastical authority. No reformer, moreover, was ever, less
aggressive than Francis. His apostolate embodied the very noblest spirit
of reform; he strove to correct abuses by holding up an ideal. He
stretched out his arms in yearning towards those who longed for the
“better gifts”. The others he left alone.
Saint Francis rejecting the money of the Sultan of Egypt
And thus, without strife or schism, God’s Poor Little Man of Assisi
became the means of renewing the youth of the Church and of imitating
the most potent and popular religious movement since the beginnings of
Christianity. No doubt this movement had its social as well as its
religious side. That the Third Order of St. Francis went far towards
re-Christianizing medieval society is a matter of history. However,
Francis’s foremost aim was a religious one. To rekindle the love of God
in the world and reanimate the life of the spirit in the hearts of men —
such was his mission. But because St. Francis sought first the Kingdom
of God and His justice, many other things were added unto him. And his
own exquisite Franciscan spirit, as it is called, passing out into the
wide world, became an abiding source of inspiration. Perhaps it savors
of exaggeration to say, as has been said, that “all the threads of
civilization in the subsequent centuries seem to hark back to Francis”,
and that since his day “the character of the whole Roman Catholic Church
is visibly Umbrian”.
Fresco of St. Francis at Subiaco. Circa 1224. Probably the oldest likeness of St. Francis.
It would be difficult, none the less, to overestimate the effect
produced by Francis upon the mind of his time, or the quickening power
he wielded on the generations which have succeeded him. To mention two
aspects only of his all-pervading influence, Francis must surely be
reckoned among those to whom the world of art and letters is deeply
indebted. Prose, as Arnold observes, could not satisfy the saint’s
ardent soul, so he made poetry. He was, indeed, too little versed in the
laws of composition to advance far in that direction. But his was the
first cry of a nascent poetry which found its highest expression in the
“Divine Comedy”; wherefore Francis has been styled the precursor of
Dante. What the saint did was to teach a people “accustomed to the
artificial versification of courtly Latin and Provencal poets, the use
of their native tongue in simple spontaneous hymns, which became even
more popular with the
Laudi and
Cantici of his poet-follower Jacopone of Todi”. In so far, moreover, as Francis’s
repraesentatio,
as Salimbene calls it, of the stable at Bethlehem is the first
mystery-play we hear of in Italy, he is said to have borne a part in the
revival of the drama. However this may be, if Francis’s love of song
called forth the beginnings of Italian verse, his life no less brought
about the birth of Italian art. His story, says Ruskin, became a
passionate tradition painted everywhere with delight. Full of color,
dramatic possibilities, and human interest, the early Franciscan legend
afforded the most popular material for painters since the life of
Christ. No sooner, indeed did Francis’s figure make an appearance in art
than it became at once a favorite subject, especially with the mystical
Umbrian School. So true is this that it has been said we might by
following his familiar figure “construct a history of Christian art,
from the predecessors of Cimabue down to Guido Reni, Rubens, and Van
Dyck”.
Probably the oldest likeness of Francis that has come down to us is that preserved in the
Sacro Speco
at Subiaco. It is said that it was painted by a Benedictine monk during
the saint’s visit there, which may have been in 1218. The absence of
the stigmata, halo, and title of saint in this fresco form its chief
claim to be considered a contemporary picture; it is not, however, a
real portrait in the modern sense of the word, and we are dependent for
the traditional presentment of Francis rather on artists’ ideals, like
the Della Robbia statue at the Porziuncola, which is surely the saint’s
vera effigies, as no Byzantine so-called portrait can ever be, and the graphic description of Francis given by Celano (
Vita Prima,
c.lxxxiii). Of less than middle height, we are told, and frail in form,
Francis had a long yet cheerful face and soft but strong voice, small
brilliant black eyes, dark brown hair, and a sparse beard. His person
was in no way imposing, yet there was about the saint a delicacy, grace,
and distinction which made him most attractive.
Death of St. Francis. Flemish school of the late 16th century
The literary materials for the history of St. Francis are more than
usually copious and authentic. There are indeed few if any medieval
lives more thoroughly documented. We have in the first place the saint’s
own writings. These are not voluminous and were never written with a
view to setting forth his ideas systematically, yet they bear the stamp
of his personality and are marked by the same unvarying features of his
preaching. A few leading thoughts taken “from the words of the Lord”
seemed to him all sufficing, and these he repeats again and again,
adapting them to the needs of the different persons whom he addresses.
Short, simple, and informal,
Francis’s writings breathe
the unstudied love of the Gospel and enforce the same practical
morality, while they abound in allegories and personification and reveal
an intimate interweaving of Biblical phraseology. Not all the saint’s
writings have come down to us, and not a few of these formerly
attributed to him are now with greater likelihood ascribed to others.
The extant and authentic
opusculaof Francis comprise, besides the rule of the Friars Minor and some fragments of the other Seraphic legislation,
several letters,
including one addressed “to all the Christians who dwell in the whole
world,” a series of spiritual counsels addressed to his disciples, the
“Laudes Creaturarum” or “
Canticle of the Sun”,
and some lesser praises, an Office of the Passion compiled for his own
use, and few other orisons which show us Francis even as Celano saw him,
“not so much a man’s praying as prayer itself”. In addition to the
saint’s writings the sources of the history of Francis include a number
of early papal bulls and some other diplomatic documents, as they are
called, bearing upon his life and work. Then come the biographies
properly so called. These include the lives written 1229-1247 by Thomas
of Celano, one of Francis’s followers; a joint narrative of his life
compiled by Leo, Rufinus, and Angelus, intimate companions of the saint,
in 1246; and the celebrated legend of St. Bonaventure, which appeared
about 1263; besides a somewhat more polemic legend called the “Speculum
Perfectionis”, attributed to Brother Leo, the sate of which is a matter
of controversy. There are also several important thirteenth- century
chronicles of the order, like those of Jordan, Eccleston, and Bernard of
Besse, and not a few later works, such as the “Chronica XXIV.
Generalium” and the “Liber de Conformitate”, which are in some sort a
continuation of them. It is upon these works that all the later
biographies of Francis’s life are based.
Recent years have witnessed a truly remarkable upgrowth of interest in the life and work of
St. Francis,
more especially among non-Catholics, and Assisi has become in
consequence the goal of a new race of pilgrims. This interest, for the
most part literary and academic, is centered mainly in the study of the
primitive documents relating to the saint’s history and the beginnings
of the Franciscan Order. Although inaugurated some years earlier, this
movement received its greatest impulse from the publication in 1894 of
Paul Sabatier’s “Vie de S. François”, a work which was almost
simultaneously crowned by the French Academy and place upon the Index.
In spite of the author’s entire lack of sympathy with the saint’s
religious standpoint, his biography of Francis bespeaks vast erudition,
deep research, and rare critical insight, and it has opened up a new era
in the study of Franciscan resources. To further this study and
International Society of Franciscan Studies was founded at Assisi in
1902, the aim of which is to collect a complete library of works on
Franciscan history and to compile a catalog of scattered Franciscan
manuscripts; several periodicals, devoted to Franciscan documents and
discussions exclusively, have moreover been established in different
countries. Although a large literature has grown up around the figure of
the
Poverello within a short time, nothing new of essential
value has been added to what was already known of the saint. The
energetic research work of recent years has resulted in the recovery of
several important early texts, and has called forth many really fine
critical studies dealing with the sources, but the most welcome feature
of the modern interest in Franciscan origins has been the careful
re-editing and translating of Francis’s own writings and of nearly all
the contemporary manuscript authorities bearing on his life. Not a few
of the controverted questions connected therewith are of considerable
import, even to those not especially students of the Franciscan legend,
but they could not be made intelligible within the limits of the present
article. It must suffice, moreover, to indicate only some of the chief
works on the life of St. Francis.
The writings of St. Francis have been published in “Opuscula S. P.
Francisci Assisiensis” (Quaracchi, 1904); Böhmer, “Analekten zur
Geschichte des Franciscus von Assisi” (Tübingen, 1904); U. d’Alençon,
“Les Opuscules de S. François d’ Assise” (Paris, 1905); Robinson, “The
Writings of St. Francis of Assisi” (Philadelphia, 1906).
(Catholic Encyclopedia)
