From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the friar and patron saint. For other uses, see Francis of Assisi (disambiguation).
| Saint Francis of Assisi OFM | |
|---|---|
| A painting of Saint Francis[a] by Philip Fruytiers | |
| Founder of the Franciscan Order Confessor of the Faith and Stigmatist | |
| Born | Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone 1181 Assisi, Duchy of Spoleto, Holy Roman Empire |
| Died | 3 October 1226 (aged approximately 44 years) Assisi, Umbria, Papal States[4] |
| Venerated in | Catholic ChurchAnglican CommunionLutheranismOld Catholic Church |
| Canonized | 16 July 1228, Assisi, Papal States by Pope Gregory IX |
| Major shrine | Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi |
| Feast | 4 October |
| Attributes | Franciscan habit, birds, animals, stigmata, crucifix, book, and a skull |
| Patronage | Franciscan Order, poor people,[5] ecology, animals, stowaways, merchants, Aguada, Naga, Cebu, Balamban, Cebu, Dumanjug, Cebu, General Trias, and Italy |
| Part of a series on |
| Christian mysticism |
|---|
| showTheology and philosophy |
| showPractices |
| showPeople (by era or century) |
| showLiterature and media |
| vte |
Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone (c. 1181 – 3 October 1226), known as Francis of Assisi,[b] was an Italian mystic, poet and Catholic friar who founded the religious order of the Franciscans. He was inspired to lead a Christian life of poverty as a beggar[7] and itinerant preacher. One of the most venerated figures in Christianity,[8][4] Francis was canonized by Pope Gregory IX on 16 July 1228. He is commonly portrayed wearing a brown habit with a rope tied around his waist, featuring three knots that symbolize the three Franciscan vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
In 1219, he went to Egypt in an attempt to convert the sultan al-Kamil and put an end to the conflict of the Fifth Crusade.[9] In 1223, he arranged for the first live nativity scene as part of the annual Christmas celebration in Greccio.[c][10][11] According to Christian tradition, in 1224 Francis received the stigmata during the apparition of a Seraphic angel in a religious ecstasy.[12]
He founded the men’s Order of Friars Minor, the women’s Order of St. Clare, the Third Order of St. Francis and the Custody of the Holy Land. Once his community was authorized by Pope Innocent III, he withdrew increasingly from external affairs.
Francis is associated with patronage of animals and the environment. It became customary for churches to hold ceremonies blessing animals on his feast day of the fourth of October. He is known for devotion to the Eucharist.[13] Along with Catherine of Siena, he was designated patron saint of Italy. He is also the namesake of the American city of San Francisco.
Names
Francis (Italian: Francesco d’Assisi; Latin: Franciscus Assisiensis) was baptized Giovanni by his mother. His surnames, di Pietro di Bernardone, come from his father, Pietro di Bernardone. The latter was in France on business when Francis was born in Assisi, a small town in Italy. Upon his return, Pietro took to calling his son Francesco (“Free man” or “Frenchman”), possibly in honor of his commercial success and enthusiasm for all things French.[14]
His full name contemporarily could be translated to John Peter “Francis” Bernardone.
Biography[edit]
Early life
Francis of Assisi was born c. 1181,[15][16] one of the children of an Italian father, Pietro di Bernardone dei Moriconi, a prosperous silk merchant, and a French mother, Pica di Bourlemont, about whom little is known except that she was a noblewoman originally from Provence.[17]
Indulged by his parents, Francis lived the high-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man.[12] As a youth, Francis became a devotee of troubadours and was fascinated with all things Transalpine.[14] He was handsome, witty, gallant, and delighted in fine clothes. He spent money lavishly.[11] Although many hagiographers remark about his bright clothing, rich friends, and love of pleasures,[17] his displays of disillusionment toward the world that surrounded him came fairly early in his life, as is shown in the “story of the beggar”. In this account, he was selling cloth and velvet in the marketplace on behalf of his father when a beggar came to him and asked for alms. At the conclusion of his business deal, Francis abandoned his wares and ran after the beggar. When he found him, Francis gave the man everything he had in his pockets. His friends mocked him for his charity; his father scolded him in rage.[18]
Around 1202, he joined a military expedition against Perugia and was taken as a prisoner at Collestrada. He spent a year as a captive,[19] during which an illness caused him to re-evaluate his life. However, upon his return to Assisi in 1203, Francis returned to his carefree life. In 1205, Francis left for Apulia to enlist in the army of Walter III, Count of Brienne. A strange vision made him return to Assisi and lose interest in the worldly life.[12] According to hagiographic accounts, thereafter he began to avoid the sports and feasts of his former companions. A friend asked him whether he was thinking of marrying, to which he answered: “Yes, a fairer bride than any of you have ever seen”, meaning his “Lady Poverty”.[11]
On a pilgrimage to Rome, he joined the poor in begging at St. Peter’s Basilica.[12] He spent some time in lonely places, asking God for divine illumination. He said he had a mystical vision of Jesus Christ in the forsaken country chapel of San Damiano, just outside Assisi, in which the Icon of Christ Crucified said to him, “Francis, Francis, go and repair My church which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.” He took this to mean the ruined church in which he was presently praying, and so he sold some cloth from his father’s store to assist the priest there.[20] When the priest refused to accept the ill-gotten gains, an indignant Francis threw the coins on the floor.[11]
In order to avoid his father’s wrath, Francis hid in a cave near San Damiano for about a month. When he returned to town, hungry and dirty, he was dragged home by his father, beaten, bound, and locked in a small storeroom. Freed by his mother during Bernardone’s absence, Francis returned at once to San Damiano, where he found 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 San Damiano, sought also to force his son to forego his inheritance by way of restitution. In the midst of legal proceedings before the Bishop of Assisi, Francis renounced his father and his patrimony.[11] Some accounts report that he stripped himself naked in token of this renunciation, and the bishop covered him with his own cloak.[21][22]
For the next couple of months, Francis wandered as a beggar in the hills behind Assisi. He spent some time at a neighbouring monastery working as a scullion. He then went to Gubbio, where a friend gave him, as an alms, the cloak, girdle, and staff of a pilgrim. Returning to Assisi, he traversed the city, begging stones for the restoration of St. Damiano. These he carried to the old chapel, set in place himself, and so at length rebuilt it. Over the course of two years, he embraced the life of a penitent, during which he restored several ruined chapels in the countryside around Assisi, among them San Pietro in Spina (in the area of San Petrignano in the valley about a kilometer from Rivotorto, today on private property and once again in ruin); and the Porziuncola, the little chapel of St. Mary of the Angels in the plain just below the town.[11] This later became his favorite abode.[20] By degrees he took to nursing lepers, in the leper colonies near Assisi.
Founding of the Franciscan Orders
Friars Minor
One morning in February 1208, Francis was taking part in a Mass in the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, near which he had by then built himself a hut. The Gospel of the day was the “Commissioning of the Twelve” from the Book of Matthew. The disciples were to go and proclaim that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Francis was inspired to devote himself to a life of poverty. Having obtained a coarse woolen tunic, the dress then worn by the poorest Umbrian peasants, he tied it around himself with a knotted rope and went about exhorting the people of the countryside to penance, brotherly love, and peace. Francis’s preaching to ordinary people was unusual as he had no license to do so.[4]
His example attracted others. Within a year Francis had eleven followers. The brothers lived a simple life in the deserted leper colony of Rivo Torto near Assisi; but they spent much of their time wandering through the mountainous districts of Umbria, making a deep impression upon their hearers by their earnest exhortations.[11]
In 1209 he composed a simple rule for his followers (“friars”), the Regula primitiva or “Primitive Rule”, which came from verses in the Bible. The rule was “to follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in his footsteps.” He then led eleven followers to Rome to seek permission from Pope Innocent III to found a new religious order.[23] Upon entry to Rome, the brothers encountered Bishop Guido of Assisi, who had in his company Giovanni di San Paolo, the Cardinal Bishop of Sabina. The Cardinal, who was the confessor of Pope Innocent III, was immediately sympathetic to Francis and agreed to represent Francis to the pope. After several days, the pope agreed to admit the group informally, adding that when God increased the group in grace and number, they could return for an official audience. The group was tonsured.[24] This was important in part because it recognized Church authority and prevented his following from accusations of heresy, as had happened to the Waldensians decades earlier. Though a number of the pope’s counselors considered the mode of life proposed by Francis to be unsafe and impractical, following a dream in which he saw Francis holding up the Lateran Basilica, he decided to endorse Francis’s order. This occurred, according to tradition, on 16 April 1210, and constituted the official founding of the Franciscan Order.[4] The group, then the “Lesser Brothers” (Order of Friars Minor also known as the Franciscan Order or the Seraphic Order), were centered in the Porziuncola and preached first in Umbria, before expanding throughout Italy.[4] Francis was later ordained a deacon, but not a priest.[11]
Poor Clares and Third Order
From then on, the new order grew quickly. Hearing Francis preaching in the church of San Rufino in Assisi in 1211, the young noblewoman Clare of Assisi sought to live like them. Her cousin Rufino also sought to join. On the night of Palm Sunday, 28 March 1212, Clare clandestinely left her family’s palace. Francis received her at the Porziuncola and thereby established the Order of Poor Clares.[25] He gave Clare a religious habit, a garment similar to his own, before lodging her, her younger sister Caterina, and other young women in a nearby monastery of Benedictine nuns until he could provide a suitable monastery. Later he transferred them to San Damiano,[4] to a few small huts or cells. This became the first monastery of the Second Franciscan Order, now known as Poor Clares.[11]
For those who could not leave their affairs, Francis later formed the Third Order of Brothers and Sisters of Penance, a fraternity composed of either laity or clergy whose members neither withdrew from the world nor took religious vows. Instead, they observed the principles of Franciscan life in their daily lives.[4] Before long, the Third Order – now titled the Secular Franciscan Order – grew beyond Italy.[26]
Travels
Determined to bring the Gospel to all peoples and let God convert them, Francis sought on several occasions to take his message out of Italy. In the late spring of 1212, he set out for Jerusalem, but was shipwrecked by a storm on the Dalmatian coast, forcing him to return to Italy. On 8 May 1213, he was given the use of the mountain of La Verna (Alverna) as a gift from Count Orlando di Chiusi, who described it as “eminently suitable for whoever wishes to do penance in a place remote from mankind”.[27] The mountain would become one of his favourite retreats for prayer.[28]
In the same year, Francis sailed for Morocco, but an illness forced him to break off his journey while in Spain.
In 1219, accompanied by Friar Illuminatus of Arce and hoping to convert the Sultan of Egypt or be martyred in the attempt, Francis went to Egypt during the Fifth Crusade where a Crusader army had been encamped for over a year besieging the walled city of Damietta. The Sultan, al-Kamil, a nephew of Saladin, had succeeded his father as Sultan of Egypt in 1218 and was encamped upstream of Damietta. A bloody and futile attack on the city was launched by the Christians on 29 August 1219, following which both sides agreed to a ceasefire that lasted four weeks.[29] Probably during this interlude Francis and his companion crossed the Muslims’ lines and were brought before the Sultan, remaining in his camp for a few days.[30] Reports give no information about what transpired during the encounter beyond noting that the Sultan received Francis graciously and that Francis preached to the Muslims. He returned unharmed.[d] No known Arab sources mention the visit.[31]
Such an incident is alluded to in a scene in the late 13th-century fresco cycle, attributed to Giotto, in the upper basilica at Assisi.[e]
According to some late sources, the Sultan gave Francis permission to visit the sacred places in the Holy Land and even to preach there. All that can safely be asserted is that Francis and his companion left the Crusader camp for Acre, from where they embarked for Italy in the latter half of 1220. Drawing on a 1267 sermon by Bonaventure, later sources report that the Sultan secretly converted or accepted a death-bed baptism as a result of meeting Francis.[f]
Due to these events in Jerusalem,[citation needed] Franciscans have been present in the Holy Land almost uninterruptedly since 1217. They received concessions from the Mameluke Sultan in 1333 with regard to certain Holy Places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and (so far as concerns the Catholic Church) jurisdictional privileges from Pope Clement VI in 1342.[32]
Reorganization of the Franciscan Order
The growing order of friars was divided into provinces; groups were sent to France, Germany, Hungary, and Spain and to the East. Upon receiving a report of the martyrdom of five brothers in Morocco, Francis returned to Italy via Venice.[33] Cardinal Ugolino di Conti was then nominated by the pope as the protector of the order. Another reason for Francis’ return to Italy was that the Franciscan Order had grown at an unprecedented rate compared to previous religious orders, but its organizational sophistication had not kept up with this growth and had little more to govern it than Francis’ example and simple rule. To address this problem, Francis prepared a new and more detailed Rule, the “First Rule” or “Rule Without a Papal Bull” (Regula prima, Regula non bullata), which again asserted devotion to poverty and the apostolic life. However, it also introduced greater institutional structure, though this was never officially endorsed by the pope.[4]
On 29 September 1220, Francis handed over the governance of the order to Brother Peter Catani at the Porziuncola, but Peter died only five months later.
Brother Peter was succeeded by Brother Elias as Vicar of Francis. Two years later, Francis modified the “First Rule”, creating the “Second Rule” or “Rule With a Bull”, which was approved by Pope Honorius III on 29 November 1223. As the order’s official rule, it called on the friars “to observe the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, living in obedience without anything of our own and in chastity”. In addition, it set regulations for discipline, preaching, and entering the order. Once the rule was endorsed by the pope, Francis withdrew increasingly from external affairs.[4] During 1221 and 1222, he crossed Italy, first as far south as Catania in Sicily and afterward as far north as Bologna.[34]
Stigmata, final days, and sainthood
While he was praying on the mountain of Verna, during a forty-day fast in preparation for Michaelmas (29 September), Francis is said to have had a vision on or about 13 September 1224, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, as a result of which he received the stigmata. Brother Leo, who had been with Francis at the time, left a clear and simple account of the event, the first definite account of the phenomenon of stigmata. “Suddenly he saw a vision of a seraph, a six-winged angel on a cross. This angel gave him the gift of the five wounds of Christ.”[37] Suffering from these stigmata and from trachoma, Francis received care in several cities (Siena, Cortona, Nocera) to no avail. In the end, he was brought back to a hut next to the Porziuncola. Here he spent his last days dictating his spiritual testament. He died on the evening of Saturday, 3 October 1226, singing Psalm 141, “Voce mea ad Dominum”.
On 16 July 1228, he was declared a saint by Pope Gregory IX (the former cardinal Ugolino di Conti, a friend of Francis and Cardinal Protector of the Order). The next day, the pope laid the foundation stone for the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. Francis was buried on 25 May 1230, under the Lower Basilica, but his tomb was soon hidden on orders of Brother Elias, in order to protect it from Saracen invaders. His burial place remained unknown until it was rediscovered in 1818. Pasquale Belli then constructed a crypt for the remains in the Lower Basilica. It was refashioned between 1927 and 1930 into its present form by Ugo Tarchi. In 1978, the remains of Francis were examined and confirmed by a commission of scholars appointed by Pope Paul VI, and put into a glass urn in the ancient stone tomb.[38]