Confessor Francis

Francis of Assisi (Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone) was born in Assisi in Umbria in the late twelfth century, conventionally dated to 1181 or 1182. His father, Pietro di Bernardone, was a prosperous cloth merchant; his mother, Pica, is reported in later sources to have been of French or Provençal background, and the child was nicknamed Francesco. He received some schooling and in adolescence and early adulthood shared the festive and martial culture of Assisi’s merchant youth. In 1202 he took part in a war between Assisi and Perugia, was captured, and spent roughly a year in prison. After his return a period of illness and inner unrest marked the beginning of his withdrawal from that way of life.

Traditional accounts, based especially on the early lives by Thomas of Celano and later on Bonaventure, place his conversion in the years around 1205–1206. Among the episodes they record are a dream or vision, an encounter in which he overcame his revulsion and embraced a leper, and the incident in the ruined church of San Damiano, where he believed the crucifix commanded him to repair the church. He began restoring churches with money obtained by selling goods from his father’s store, which provoked a legal and familial crisis. In a public scene before the bishop of Assisi he returned his clothes to Pietro and declared that he now acknowledged only God as his father. Thereafter he lived in poverty, begging and working with his hands, and restored San Damiano, a church of San Pietro, and the Porziuncola. Disciples gathered around him. In 1209 or 1210 he took a short Gospel-based rule to Rome and obtained oral approval from Pope Innocent III for the brotherhood that became the Order of Friars Minor.

The fraternity expanded quickly in central Italy. Francis preached repentance, peace, and evangelical poverty; the friars were to own nothing and to live by work and alms. In 1212 Clare of Assisi left her family to follow this way of life; Francis settled her community at San Damiano, from which the Order of Poor Ladies (Poor Clares) developed. A form of life for lay penitents, later called the Third Order, also emerged. Francis sought to preach beyond Italy: an attempt to reach Syria was frustrated, and in 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, he traveled to Egypt and was admitted to the presence of Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil. A more detailed Rule was confirmed by Pope Honorius III in 1223. In September 1224, while in retreat on Mount La Verna in the Casentino, Francis is said by his companions to have received the stigmata. He composed the Canticle of the Creatures, praising God through sun, moon, wind, water, fire, earth, and even Sister Bodily Death.

In his last years Francis suffered from multiple ailments, including a severe disease of the eyes. He spent time at Siena and elsewhere for treatment, then returned to Assisi. He died at the Porziuncola on 3 October 1226 and was buried at the church of San Giorgio. Pope Gregory IX, formerly Cardinal Ugolino and protector of the order, canonized him on 16 July 1228. His body was later translated to the basilica built in his honor at Assisi. Francis became one of the most popular saints of the Latin Church. Medieval and later devotion emphasized his poverty, his reported familiarity with animals and the natural world, the stigmata, and his peace-making. He is commemorated on 4 October and is invoked as a patron of Italy, of animals, and, in modern times, of ecology and the environment.