Francis of Assisi

1181–1226
Friar and preacher

Sources

His Conversion. One of the most striking embodiments of evangelical revival in the Middle Ages is Francis of Assisi. In his youth, Francis experienced a radical upheaval in his values and assumptions about life. In his Testament (1226), he attributes this change to his attitude toward lepers: “When I was still in the world, it was too bitter for me to see lepers; after the Lord granted me to show mercy to lepers, that which had first seemed bitter to me now changed into sweetness of the soul and of the body and a little while later I went out of the world.” The reason for Francis’s conversion, then, was not so much poverty, for love of which he later became famous, as the awareness of human suffering and its importance as a means of union between the Christian and Christ. With this discovery Francis acquired a new sense of what it meant to live a Christian life.

Love of Poverty. Francis’s renunciation of the world reached its height when his father brought him before an ecclesiastical court, suing for the return of goods Francis had sold without his permission and seeking to cut off his son’s inheritance. This episode has been connected to Francis’s discovery that poverty was a liberating experience that releases one from all servitude and connects one to the great mass of the poor. Francis did not preach rebellion to the poor, nor did he attack the lifestyle of the clergy; he spoke exclusively of the need to imitate Christ. He soon found a large number of followers who wished to join in the task of living out the Gospel joyfully, without property or stable institutions, relying on begging and occasional work for their support.

The Franciscan Order. With papal approval, Francis and his followers began to preach in a manner that was not primarily theological, but exhortative and penitential. Francis’s preaching was not intended to educate people. His hearers were frequently fascinated by him and decided to join his order. From Francis’s own lifetime, the Franciscan experience was also open to women, even if they were not able, in the social conditions of the time, to enjoy the same freedom to roam about as the friars. Inspired by Francis, Clare of Assisi founded a group of women who lived the religious life and came to be known as the Poor Clares, and took up the work of relieving human suffering by assistance to the poor and the sick. In Francis’s time, the Franciscans also became associated with groups of pious laypeople interested in imitating their life. These laypeople, who soon acquired a formal connection with the order, became members of hundreds of Franciscan confraternities throughout Europe, which assisted the practical existence of the order and served as important centers of Franciscan piety and devotion. The success of these confraternities was not always well received by the secular clergy, who saw their reputation weakened by the new orders, as it had been in earlier centuries by popular admiration for monks and other ascetics. Despite this degree of clerical opposition, the new orders were phenomenally successful, responding as they did to the restlessness of urban society and its search for a more intimate and sustaining spirituality. These same needs made for the success of other mendicant orders founded after the Franciscans and Dominicans, such as the Carmelites and the Friar-Hermits of St. Augustine.

The Canticle of the Sun. (Francis’s last years were afflicted by illness as well as by misunderstandings and difficulties with his brethren within the order. In the midst of these difficulties, however, Francis’s joy, which later generations would see as his trademark, emerged. His poverty and renunciation of all that might ease his suffering never stopped him from feeling that life was a precious good because it was the manifestation and gift of the supreme goodness of God. This goodness, he believed, did not touch humankind alone, but was expressed in the beauty of nature, through which God makes himself known to men. For this reason, in the midst of his last sufferings Francis produced his Canticle of the Sun (1225). The poem, which was composed in the vernacular, served lay brothers in the order as his Latin Testament served for the clerical members; his unlettered brothers and those who had heard and seen him preach throughout Italy found in this poem the exaltation of God through his creatures. In the conclusion of the poem, Francis wrote of the two supreme goods of men, peace of the heart and holiness before God. The canticle is a message that, beginning with the universe, concludes with man as the only being who can appreciate God’s work in the universe and in man’s own heart; most dramatically, God’s work is seen even in death, which according to Francis ought to cause fear and trembling only in those who, although endowed with eyes, have not been able to see God and who, having allowed themselves to be fascinated by deceitful appearances, are unable to elevate themselves to the eternal beauty of the Creator in his creation.

Stigmata and Canonization. Francis’s ideals had a powerful influence among all those who met and heard him. The most striking revelation took place at his death, when his body is said to have manifested the stigmata (wounds of Christ in the hands, feet, and side). Immediately after this miracle, the view of Francis as a second Christ and a renewer of Christ on earth became fixed among believers. Only two years after his death, in 1228, Gregory IX, who had been protector of the Franciscan order and a friend to Francis, proclaimed him a saint.

His Legacy. Francis left to his order the mission to live and work among the masses. The forms of piety developed and fostered by Francis reflect this mission. For example, he is said to be the inventor of the Christmas manger, an expedient intended to reveal to the simple faithful the human reality of Christ. Likewise, it was under the influence of Francis and his order that the sufferings of the crucified Christ began to be depicted much more realistically. The Franciscans have always been present among the poor, not merely to provide pastoral care for them, but also to share their poverty. This witness to poverty made the Franciscans one of the most lively forces in the Church of the later Middle Ages.

Sources

Rosalind B. Brooke, The Coming of the Friars (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1975).

Francis of Assisi and Clare of Assisi, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, translated by Regis Armstrong and Ignatius Brady (New York: Paulist Press, 1982).