Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi was born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone in Assisi, in the region of Umbria, in the early 1180s. His father, Pietro di Bernardone, was a prosperous cloth merchant whose trade connected Assisi with French markets; his mother, Pica, is traditionally said to have come from a family of Provençal origin. Pietro called the boy Francesco, a name that stuck. Francis received some education, including Latin, at the church of San Giorgio, but his youth was marked more by the convivial life of Assisi's well-to-do young men than by scholarship. He took part in the civic conflict between Assisi and Perugia, was captured in battle around 1202, and spent about a year in prison. After being ransomed he fell seriously ill. When he recovered he set out to join a military expedition in Apulia under a count of Brienne, but a dream at Spoleto led him to abandon the campaign and return to Assisi, where his friends found him increasingly withdrawn from former pleasures.

His conversion was not a single moment but a series of experiences over several years. He gave generously to the poor and, in an episode he later singled out as transformative, overcame his revulsion and embraced a leper. Praying before the Byzantine-style crucifix in the half-ruined church of San Damiano, he understood himself commanded to repair the church, which was falling into ruin. He sold a load of his father's cloth and a horse at Foligno and offered the proceeds to the priest of San Damiano, who refused them. Pietro, enraged, brought his son before the civil authorities and then before Bishop Guido of Assisi. There Francis stripped off his clothes, returned them to his father, and declared that henceforth he would acknowledge only God as his father. Naked, he was covered with the bishop's own cloak. He then lived as a hermit and laborer, repairing San Damiano, San Pietro, and the little chapel of Saint Mary of the Angels, the Portiuncula, which became the cradle of his movement. He began to preach penance in the streets and countryside, using simple language and song.

In 1208 or 1209 the first companions—Bernard of Quintavalle, Peter Cattani, Giles, and others—joined him. They lived at Rivo Torto and then at the Portiuncula, going out in pairs to preach. Francis drew up a short rule composed of Gospel texts and, with his brothers, walked to Rome. Pope Innocent III, after a dream in which he saw a poor man holding up the Lateran basilica, gave oral approval to their form of life, traditionally dated to 1209. The group was tonsured, and Francis, who remained a deacon and never became a priest, received authorization to preach. On Palm Sunday 1212 Clare of Assisi fled her family home and was received by Francis at the Portiuncula; he cut her hair and placed her first with Benedictine nuns, then at San Damiano, where a community of women following a life of poverty took root, later called the Poor Clares. A brotherhood for laypeople, the Brothers and Sisters of Penance, also developed. Francis sent friars to France, Spain, Germany, and the Holy Land. He himself attempted missions to Islamic lands: a journey toward Spain and Morocco was interrupted by illness; in 1219 he reached the crusader camp at Damietta during the Fifth Crusade and, crossing the lines, was brought before Sultan al-Kamil. Contemporary accounts describe a courteous disputation about faith. Francis returned to Italy as the order grew rapidly and faced problems of organization and of brothers who wanted a more conventional monastic structure.

Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia, the future Gregory IX, became protector of the order. A rule was presented at the Chapter of Mats; the earlier unconfirmed rule of 1221 was followed by the shorter rule approved by Pope Honorius III in November 1223. That same year Francis arranged a Christmas celebration at Greccio with a manger, ox, and ass, an episode later seen as ancestral to the Christmas crib. In September 1224, while observing a forty-day fast on Mount La Verna in honor of Saint Michael, he had a vision of a seraphic figure and thereafter bore the wounds of Christ in his hands, feet, and side, the first recorded case of stigmata in Christian history. Nearly blind and in great pain, he was treated unsuccessfully at Rieti and Siena. At San Damiano he composed the Canticle of the Creatures, a poem in Umbrian dialect praising God through Brother Sun, Sister Moon, wind, water, fire, and Sister Mother Earth, later adding verses of reconciliation and a stanza welcoming Sister Bodily Death. He was carried to the Portiuncula and died there at dusk on 3 October 1226, lying on the bare ground as he had requested. He was buried in the church of San Giorgio. Gregory IX canonized him on 16 July 1228, and a great double basilica was built to house his tomb, which remains in the crypt of the Lower Church in Assisi. Francis's emphasis on poverty, humility, preaching, and kinship with all creatures has made him one of the most influential saints in Western Christianity and the patron of Italy, of animals, and of ecology.