Saint Francis of Assisi
Founder of the Order of Franciscans
Francis of Assisi was born in 1182, the only son of Pietro Bernardone, a wealthy cloth merchant of central Italy. Peitro gave his son the name of Giovanni at baptism, though he afterwards altered his son’s name to Francesco, perhaps in honor of his trading in France. Pietro’s worldly success had secured for the young Francis a care-free life of material comfort. Francis was a popular youth, often the center of attention, who could be found engaged in sport, frequenting the piazze of the city, or confidently serenading the young women of Assisi.
Francis eagerly sought the glory and honor of battle and in 1201, at the age of 19, outfitted himself as a knight in order to join the war with Assisi’s rival, Perugia. After an abrupt defeat, however, Francis spent nearly a year as a prisoner of the neighboring city-state while his father raised the money in 1203 to pay his ransom. Though he turned frequently to the Sacred Scriptures for comfort, imprisonment and illness had shattered his self-assurance. Moreover, instead of reassuring him, the Gospel challenged Francis with the still unfamiliar values of Christian discipleship.
In 1205 he again tried to outfit himself as a knight, but after suffering another illness, he had a vision that marked the beginning of his conversion. He was 23 years old. Uncertain and pensive, he returned to Assisi where his initial depression soon became an emotional crisis. His old way of life and his old friends left him feeling disillusioned and empty. His evident dissatisfaction with the material comforts of his life frustrated his father, particularly as Francis spontaneously began to share his family’s wealth with the poor. Indeed, the lack of understanding between the two provoked harsh, angry words from the father and a sullen, hostile silence from the son. Pietro failed to recognize the turmoil in his son; Francis could not express himself to his father.
In 1206, while praying in the tiny church in San Damiano, Christ spoke to him from the crucifix saying, “Rebuild my Church.” So Francis set about the task of rebuilding the forsaken wayside chapel of St. Damian in the valley below Assisi. Although he believed that the task of “rebuilding” the Church was just a matter of stones and mortar, his life-style changed accordingly. Many people thought that he had gone mad, and his family must have been embarrassed by his behavior. Nonetheless, some were attracted to the simplicity and sincerity of his new life.
The growing friction between Francis and his father exploded publicly in October of 1206 when Pietro Bernardone pursued his son to the central piazza of the city and demanded repayment for all that Francis had squandered in his generosity to the poor—and for the money Francis had spent in his restoration work. Before all the townspeople gathered there, Francis stripped himself naked, renounced his hereditary rights, and gave his fine clothes back to his astonished father. The Bishop of Assisi, who had witnessed the dramatic gesture, wrapped his cloak around the young man, who thereafter dressed himself in a simple flaxen tunic tied at the waist with a cord. Hence Francis solemnized his “wedding” with his beloved spouse, the Lady Poverty, under whose name he surrendered all worldly goods, honors, and privileges.
Whatever the attitude of the people around him, Francis began to recognize the true nature of God’s call. While Francis thought initially that he was called to reconstruct a dilapidated building—and though he also restored two other deserted chapels, St. Peter’s, some distance from Assisi, and St. Mary of the Angels of the Porziuncola in the valley below Assisi—he gradually came to recognize his vocation in rebuilding the spiritual life of the Church by bearing witness to the saving power of the Gospel. Young men of Assisi began to take notice of the remarkable change that had overtaken Francis. One night, Bernardo da Quintavalle observed the unsuspecting Francis as he repeatedly prayed “My God and My All.” Inspired by his friend’s piety and devotion, Bernardo gave away his vast fortune and joined Francis in order to live more fully the call of the Gospel with him. As others joined them, the city of Assisi marveled at how many of its young men would forsake material comforts to follow Christ in poverty.
In 1209, Pope Innocent III had a dream in which he witnessed the walls of the great Lateran Basilica, the symbol of the universal Church, slowly falling down. Before the utter collapse of the church, however, a small man wearing a simple gray tunic tied at the waist by a cord rushed up to support the church and prevent its collapse. Meanwhile, in 1210 Francis walked to Rome with his band of followers in order to obtain the blessing of the Pope on the founding of his Order. On seeing him, Pope Innocent recognized Francis as the figure in his dream and eagerly blessed him and his followers and verbally approved their rule of life through which they would renew the Church.
Several years later Clare, the daughter of a nobleman of Assisi and ten years younger than Francis, begged to join his Gospel life of poverty. So Francis received her in 1212 with several other young women and placed them in a monastery where they developed a contemplative rule which expressed their commitment to peace, to prayer, and to solitude. By successfully integrating Franciscan spirituality with the monastic lifestyle, Clare of Assisi proved to be one of the great religious innovators of her age. To this day, the Poor Clares have retained their commitment to the contemplative life and continue as the cloistered branch of the Franciscan family.
After accepting his call to live the Gospel, during the years of 1207-1209 Francis dedicated himself to a life of prayer and solitude. One day, in a singular moment of personal conversion, Francis encountered a leper. In his age, lepers were forced to ring a bell wherever they went and to cry out the warning: “Unclean!” Society had embedded in Francis an incomparable loathing for persons afflicted with this class of illness. He had always feared both the disease itself and the horrible disfigurement it wrought. Customarily he reacted to lepers with repugnance and anxiety. Like so many of his contemporaries, his personal revulsion affected the further humiliation of these afflicted persons and added to their suffering. Nonetheless, in a decisive moment of illumination, Francis suddenly perceived in this leper the embodiment of God’s beauty, a human being to be loved and cared for tenderly. By embracing the leper, the Saint learned to embrace all people just as Jesus did. As a community, the friars nursed and bathed the lepers, beginning the Franciscan tradition of special attention to the poor and outcast.
When Francis learned to understand and cherish each individual person as a unique reflection of God’s creative genius, a true attitude of human concern and compassion began to form within him. Through grace, Francis turned his initial revulsion at the sight of a leper into a personal triumph over judgment, bigotry, and false assumptions. This impulse led, in turn, to a movement of peace that would affect legions of people for centuries.
As his reputation for holiness and peace spread throughout his native Italy, people called upon him to resolve their disputes and to deliver them from danger and violence. On one such occasion, the people of the small town of Gubbio alerted Francis to the presence of a ferocious wolf in their countryside. All efforts to trap the wolf or drive him away had failed, so they called upon the Saint to intervene. He went out with only the message of the Gospel: no weapon, no sanctions, no threatening bravado. Francis met the wolf and called him to repentance for the chaos and harm that he had caused. The wolf and the townspeople agreed to live in peace; the wolf would refrain from attacks and the townspeople would feed the wolf for the rest of his life.
As is frequently the case, such pious legends often have a basis in history and scholars have long thought that this popular narrative of Francis exercising miraculous power over the world of animals has at its core a factual account of no lesser spiritual importance. It may well be that the term “Wolf of Gubbio” signifies an epithet attached to a notorious outlaw of the period, who both raided livestock and robbed people as well. Confronted by armed villagers, the “Wolf” nonetheless prevailed, being either more skillful with weapons or more ruthless in nature. Francis, however, neither confronted him with arms nor threatened him by sanctions. Rather, he challenged the robber in the name of the Lord to reconcile with his victims and so to experience the peace that only Christ can bring.
Thus, the legend of the “Wolf of Gubbio” points to a more enduring dimension of Francis’ historical ministry, namely, the reconciliation of sinners and their reintegration into the fabric of social life through the grace of forgiveness. The spirituality of Saint Francis derives from his clear and constant focus on Jesus Christ, the God who shares our humanity. Francis saw the self-imposed poverty and humility of Jesus as the gateway to our saving encounter with God. This so overwhelmed the poor man of Assisi that he sought to follow, in strictest poverty, the Christ who loved us without limit. To drive home the astonishing humility with which God embraced the human condition, the Saint decided visually to re-create the Bethlehem experience in a cave among the hills of central Italy. Carrying a small infant in his arms, Francis led the people of Greccio in procession with their various farm animals to a grotto where the Saint made the Christmas liturgy itself a dramatic celebration of the mystery of the Incarnation.
Though Francis considered himself unworthy to be a priest, he had been ordained a deacon so that he could preach the Gospel with the blessing of the Church. At Greccio, wearing the dalmatic, the vestment of a deacon, he proclaimed the Christmas Gospel at Mass and, with his simple gesture of placing an infant in the manger, forever imprinted our hearts and minds with the love of God made flesh in Bethlehem’s tiny child. Thus Francis began a tradition that persists to this day: the Christmas crèche.
Burning with desire to preach the Gospel and win the prize of martyrdom, Francis decided to make Jesus known in the Muslim world. Thus, in the midst of the Fifth Crusade of 1219, Francis dramatically crossed the battle lines at Damietta in order to speak with Malik al-Kamil, the Ayubid Sultan of Egypt. Intrigued by the courage and simplicity of this bold but unassuming man, the Sultan recognized in Francis a Christian unlike any other. In their meeting, did they exchange their respective visions of the world and God’s role in it? Historians report that Malik al-Kamil was moved by his words and listened to Francis very willingly. With admiration for his visitor, the Sultan spared Francis and sent him back to Italy.
Two greatly different men had met in the spirit of respect and concern—one with remarkable temporal authority, the other with unsurpassed spiritual energy. Perhaps each of them recognized the Spirit of God at work in the other. Francis returned to the Christian world to take up again the challenge of preaching and living the Gospel. By sparing his life, al-Kamil had given Francis a renewed sense of purpose. The Lord did not fulfill his desire for martyrdom, reserving for him instead a different task. God wanted Francis and his brothers to reinvigorate every aspect of Christian society with the concrete experience of God’s loving mercy. For Francis and his brothers, Divine mercy would find its expression in tolerance and compassion, the precursors of reconciliation and unity.
Throughout the years that followed his conversion and public commitment to the Gospel, Francis’ life and attitude continued to change remarkably. More and more, his days were consumed in the ongoing experience of deep spiritual union with God. During the Lent of 1224, two years before his death, his mind and heart turned frequently to meditate upon the suffering of Christ and His obedience to the Father. Retreating with Friar Leo into the wilderness, Francis agonized over the great pain that Jesus experienced and thanked our Lord for the supreme sacrifice that He had endured.
On September 14, 1224, in the solitude of prayer on Mount Alverna, while praising God and pouring out his love for Him, Francis beheld the crucified Christ borne aloft by six wings. In this moment of seraphic ecstasy, he who had sought to imitate Christ in all things, received the marks of his Lord’s crucifixion—the stigmata—on his hands, feet, and side. And so, when the world was growing cold, Christ renewed the marks of His passion in the flesh of Saint Francis to rekindle our love for God. By bearing the marks of the crucifixion in his body, Francis experienced an even deeper union with Jesus. Thus, the God whom Francis had cherished, both as the child of Bethlehem and as the victim at Calvary, brought the Saint into more perfect conformity with His Son
Francis died on the evening of October 3, 1226, at the age of 44.
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