Francis of Assisi

The story

The merchant's son

Francis was born at Assisi, in Umbria, in 1181 or 1182. His father, Pietro di Bernardone, was a rich cloth merchant, and as a young man Francis led a merry life: fine clothes, parties with friends, songs in French, and the dream of becoming a knight. In 1202 he took part in a battle between Assisi and neighbouring Perugia, was taken prisoner and stayed almost a year in a cell. When he came home he was ill, and something in him had changed.

He began to feel dissatisfied with the life he was leading. He started to pray in abandoned little churches. One day, in the ruined church of San Damiano, in front of a crucifix, he seemed to hear a voice saying to him: “Go and repair my house.” He thought it meant that church, and began to restore it with his own hands. To get the money, he sold some of his father's cloth.

“Father, from today my father is in heaven”

Pietro was furious. He brought his son before the bishop of Assisi, asking for his money back and for him to be cut out of the inheritance. Francis, in 1206, in front of everyone, took off his clothes, gave them back to his father and said he no longer wanted to depend on him, but only on the Father who is in heaven. The bishop covered him with his cloak. From that day Francis chose a life of complete poverty, dressed in a simple rough habit, barefoot, begging for alms.

Soon others followed him. They lived together near Assisi, in the little church of the Porziuncola, working with their hands for the peasants and for the sick, especially for lepers, whom others avoided, and preaching in a simple way. In 1209 or 1210 Francis went to Rome and obtained from Pope Innocent III permission to live by a very short rule, taken from the Gospel. The order of the Friars Minor, later called Franciscans, was born.

In 1212 a young noblewoman of Assisi, Clare, ran away from home to follow him; with other women she founded an order for women, the Poor Clares.

The Canticle of the Creatures

Francis loved nature and animals, and thought of all created things as brothers and sisters. Stories are told about him such as the sermon to the birds and the meeting with a fierce wolf at Gubbio, which he is said to have persuaded to stop attacking people. These are tales that grew out of legend, but they express well his way of looking at the world. In 1223, at Greccio, he prepared the first nativity scene, with living people and animals.

In 1219 he even went to Egypt, where the crusaders were besieging Damietta, and met the sultan al-Malik al-Kamil: he wanted to preach peace. He was received with respect and came back safe and sound. In 1224, on Mount La Verna, according to his biographers, he received the stigmata, that is, the marks of Jesus's wounds on his body.

Towards the end of his life, almost blind and ill, he composed the “Canticle of the Creatures”, or “Canticle of Brother Sun”, one of the first poetic texts of Italian literature written in the vernacular, that is, in the everyday language and not in Latin. In it he praised God for the sun, the moon, the wind, water, fire and “our sister Mother Earth”. He died at the Porziuncola on 3 October 1226, aged forty-four. Two years later he was proclaimed a saint.

His body was carried to the basilica built in his honour and, for fear that it might be stolen, was hidden so well that the friars found it only in 1818, after long searching. Today the tomb is in the crypt of the basilica at Assisi, and every year many visitors come to it from all over the world.