St. Francis of Assisi
The age of St. Francis of Assisi
By the end of the 12th century, when St. Francis was born, the unity and Christian universality of the European peoples was beginning to lose its political and religious cohesion. After the death of Frederick Barbarossa the Empire was seen more as an enemy to be fought than as an authority deserving respect and obedience. In Germany it was weakened by the great feudal lords and the free cities, and in Italy by the communes.
Ecclesiastical learning flourished in the schools and among scholars. After the famous reform of Pope Gregory VII outward discipline had spread and the influence of the Church had grown. The Church had excellent popes, and under Innocent III it would live through one of the most brilliant periods of its history. Yet among the masses heresies multiplied and spread as fast as an epidemic.
In Italy, between the powers of the Church and the Empire, stood the commune, supported by the bishops and opposed by the feudal lords. The commune meant groups of townspeople who worked, produced, traded, travelled and handled money, and who used money to gain power, throwing off the yoke of feudal subjection and defending themselves against the ambitions of greater and lesser knights.
The commune also drew in the peasants, who had until then been scattered. Country people were slowly moving to the towns, a money economy was replacing the natural economy, markets and fairs were growing, and crafts were spreading; on the way to specialisation, craftsmen were joining together in guilds.
This economic and political change made life far more active and lively than it had been under the feudal system. It awakened new spiritual needs, which showed themselves among other things in the spread of the vernacular and its use even in official documents. A change of language is so momentous that it brings with it a change of culture. And so the vernacular heralded the birth of a new people.
This new people of the communes was slipping out from under feudal authority. It was also escaping the influence of what was then the greatest power of the Church, monasticism. The monks did not leave their monasteries, so their voice could not reach the townspeople who worked and suffered in their communes, who crossed the Alps on the backs of mules with loads of cloth, bales of linen and purses of money...
Instead of monks, heretics from beyond the Alps came to these townspeople: Cathars, Patarines, Waldensians... Everywhere they preached a return to a life of Gospel poverty and work, and they also sowed the slogans of humanism and of revolt against the Church. They found a hearing because they mingled with craftsmen and talkative gossips. They began with the most fascinating subject: the morals of the clergy. They spoke ill of priests, bishops and monks, sometimes not without some justification. Then they presented themselves as poor and pure, as true followers of Jesus Christ.
They explained the Gospel to their listeners in the vernacular, while preachers in the churches used Latin. Some of the innovators preached apocalyptic teachings about the imminent coming of the Antichrist, stirring up the masses. It was in the second half of the 12th century that the Cistercian Joachim of Fiore foretold the coming of a third age, the age of the Spirit, which would be an age of purification for the Church.
Meanwhile the old powers, the Empire, feudalism and knighthood, still existed and still had influence. Even in their decline they kept something of their greatness. Knighthood met a heroic end in the Crusades. On the one hand, enthusiasm for heroic deeds, personal courage, the beauty of faith and the thirst for adventure in distant lands kindled in the knights a burning desire to free the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the unbelievers, and the Gospel ideal lived in the land of Jesus Christ enlivened their faith. On the other hand, seaports full of goods attracted the maritime republics and the merchant class. Thanks to this coincidence of events the life of the European peoples, and above all of Italy, developed towards ever greater activity.
What did the Church offer the new townspeople, who did not want to hear Latin, who lost patience during long liturgical chants, who had no time to make pilgrimages to the mother abbey to pray for peace, and who were learning on their own to read, write and count...? Sometimes the ministry of the priests was excellent, but it could not put everything right. Heresies were breaking into the masses, especially among the small craftsmen, among whom shoemakers, tailors and weavers made up the largest part of the sectarians.
And so at the end of the 12th century the peoples of Christian Europe felt two needs: to conform their lives strictly to the Gospel, and to have a Christian assessment of the new forms of life, especially the form of life most typical of modern culture: activity. It was then that God, in His fatherly providence, sent St. Francis of Assisi.
(A. Gemelli OFM, Franciszkanizm [Franciscanism], Warsaw 1988, pp. 17-20.)
A biographical outline
St. Francis was born in Assisi at the end of 1181 or the beginning of 1182, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant, Pietro Bernardone, and of Giovanna, known as Pica. At baptism he received the name John the Baptist, which his father, on returning from France, changed to Francesco, Francis. He received his first religious formation from his devout mother. He learned to read and write at the parish school of San Giorgio, and then completed his basic education with elements of arithmetic, poetry and music; he also learned French.
At the age of 14 he was put to work in his father's shop to learn the merchant's trade. He was "a shrewd merchant, but a vain spender" (1 Cel 2). The firstborn son (he had only one brother, Angelo), proclaimed king by the young people, spent money lavishly, dressed in an unusual and colourful way, and led the games and songs at evening gatherings. His parents were indulgent. Because of his good natural and moral qualities, his noble speech and manners, his generosity to the poor and his upright conduct, he was admired above all by his mother and his friends.
He fought against the imperial garrison at the castle (1198), and later took part in the defensive war against Perugia (November 1202). After the defeat of Assisi he was taken prisoner by the Perugians. Released after a year and marked by illness, he began to see the world differently. To fulfil his dreams of glory he set out for Apulia to win a knight's title (1205). But in a dream at Spoleto the Lord invited him to go and serve a nobler master (2 Cel 5-6).
He withdrew from his friends. He spent his time in long meditation and prayer in a solitary cave. And when, on meeting a leper, he overcame his disgust and kissed him, he experienced a deep transformation: what had been bitter became sweet to him. Soon afterwards, while praying in the little church of San Damiano, he heard a voice from the crucifix: "Francis, go and repair my house, which, as you see, is falling into ruin" (2 Cel 10).
He withdrew to San Damiano and, as an oblate, placed himself under the protection of the Church. He stood up to his father and, before the court of Bishop Guido II, renounced his family inheritance, declaring: "From now on I will freely say: 'Our Father who art in heaven', and not father Pietro Bernardone, to whom I give back not only the money but all my clothes as well. So I will go naked to the Lord" (2 Cel 12).
Clothed in a poor tunic in the shape of a cross, he proclaimed himself "the herald of the great King" and for two years led a life of penance as a hermit. Then he set about rebuilding three little churches: San Damiano, San Pietro della Spina and Santa Maria degli Angeli, known as the Portiuncula.
He stirred all of Assisi. The mob mocked him; others admired him. On the feast of St. Matthias the Apostle, 24 February 1208, he heard the Gospel about the sending out of the apostles and their poverty (Mt 10; Lk 9-10). At once he put on different clothing: a tunic in the shape of a cross, tied with a white cord, and with the bishop's permission he began to preach peace and penance in the church of San Giorgio.
Two respected citizens of Assisi decided to follow in Francis's footsteps: Bernard of Quintavalle, a nobleman of wealth, and Peter Catani, a doctor of law (1208). In the same year the young Giles, a commoner, joined them, and eight others. The following year (1209) Pope Innocent III approved this group's way of life according to the Gospel. So the First Order of St. Francis came into being: the Friars Minor, the Franciscans.
With the Pope's permission for himself and his companions, Francis, as a "new evangelist" (1 Cel 89), began an itinerant popular apostolate and penitential preaching among other evangelising preachers and sectarians, endowed with every charism of divine grace and the support of Church authority.
He began every sermon with a greeting of peace: "May the Lord give you peace!" His simple words, spoken with a great heart, reminded everyone of God the Creator and His commandments, of justice and mercy, of punishment and glory. He interwove admonitions to penance "for the forgiveness of sins" with encouragement to peace and brotherhood with all, to the practice of Christian virtues in every state and social class, and to the reception of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, in which "the Lord is seen bodily". Unlike the heretics he showed deep respect for all priests, because of the dignity of their ordination, and reverence for holy Mother Church. He also taught respect for all people, rich and poor, masters and servants, good and bad.
"He filled the whole earth with the Gospel of Christ, announcing the kingdom of God to everyone, and he edified his listeners no less by example than by word; he spoke with his whole body" (1 Cel 23). He spoke to everyone. With sincere and courageous words he proclaimed the truth without embellishment or flattery, so that even educated people of fame and rank listened to him with holy fear. Clergy, religious and lay people came to hear him, seeing in the "new evangelist" almost "a man from another world", "a new light sent from heaven to earth" to enlighten everyone and draw them to the things of God.
Over more than 15 years he travelled through most of Italy. Full of missionary zeal and longing for martyrdom among the "Saracens", he twice set out abroad: in 1212 for Syria, and in 1214/1215 for Spain on the way to Morocco. The first time a storm cast him onto the coast of Dalmatia; the second time illness forced him to return from Spain.
Meanwhile, in 1212, by receiving St. Clare to a life of penance, he founded his second Order: the Poor Ladies of San Damiano, the Damianites, later called the Order of the Poor Clares.
In 1217 he sent his friars under Brother Elias to Syria and Palestine, and the first brother martyrs to Morocco (1219-1220), while he himself went by sea to the Near East and even reached the Sultan of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil, who received him and listened to him kindly. This sending of the first missionary brothers to Africa and the Near East opened the great road and history of the Catholic missions in the world.
In 1221, responding to wishes coming from all sides, he gave rules of Christian life for people living in the world who wished to live according to his teaching in the spirit of the Gospel. So the Third Order of Penitents, the Tertiaries, came into being, as a distinct brotherhood among the other groups of Penitents of that time.
To show himself and the people the mystery of Christmas, at Greccio, a castle in the Rieti valley, surrounded by a great crowd, at midnight on 24 December 1223 he set up a crib and had the shepherds' Mass celebrated, at which he served as deacon and preached the word of God about Jesus born of Mary, the Virgin Mother, in Bethlehem.
After returning from the East, already ill and almost blind, he handed over the leadership of the Order to Brother Peter Catani and, after his early death, to Brother Elias as vicar (1221-1227), while he himself set about writing the final Rule of the Friars Minor, which, after its acceptance by the General Chapter of the Brotherhood, was approved by Pope Honorius III on 29 November 1223.
In the summer of 1224 he withdrew to Mount La Verna, where he spent his time in long prayer, contemplation and fasting. There, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September), Jesus crucified appeared to him in the form of a winged Seraph and imprinted on his body the living stigmata of the Lord's Passion: in his hands and feet, nails of flesh with long, bent points, and a bleeding wound in his side. He was the first stigmatic in the history of Christianity to be recognised by the Church and honoured with a liturgical commemoration on 17 September.
He returned from La Verna to Assisi as a living image of the Crucified. He spent the last two years in prolonged suffering, afflicted by a serious eye disease and troubled by other ailments. At the end of 1224 or the beginning of 1225 he stayed for some days in a hut of reeds by San Damiano and, almost blind, after one night in which the Lord assured him of his approaching end and eternal reward, in mystical rapture he dictated to his companions the Canticle of Brother Sun and of all other creatures (2 Cel 213).
Yielding to the insistence of the Protector of the Order, Cardinal Hugolino, later Pope Gregory IX, that he should be treated by the papal physician in Rieti, he underwent a painful cauterisation of the temples, which only increased his suffering. In April 1226 he overcame a crisis of his illness and set out for Assisi by way of Siena and Cortona. He stayed first in the bishop's palace, and at the end of September, at his request, he was carried to the Portiuncula, where he wished to die.
There, on the evening of Saturday 3 October 1226, while listening to the account of the Lord's Passion from the Gospel of St. John, he passed to the house of the heavenly Father. Lying on the bare ground, marked with the stigmata, which many brothers and lay people then examined, he looked like a true Crucified One taken down from the Cross (Brother Elias, Circular Letter on the Death of St. Francis, in: Early Franciscan Sources, vol. 1, Warsaw 1981, p. 20).
The next morning, Sunday, his body was solemnly carried to the church of San Giorgio, where it rested for three and a half years and where he was canonised on 16 July 1228. At the wish of Pope Gregory IX, Brother Elias soon began building the Basilica of St. Francis on the "Hill of Paradise". His body was moved there on 25 May 1230, and there it rests to this day, constantly surrounded by the prayer of those who are near and those who come from afar.
On 22 April 1230 the same Pope Gregory IX declared the basilica, together with the adjoining friary known as the Sacro Convento, the Holy Convent, "head and mother of the whole Order of Minors".
Personality and Gospel spirituality
St. Francis was a delicate figure, very slight in build, but his personality was so rich and many-sided that historians still struggle today to grasp all its aspects, as well as its dominant feature.
Francis is a saint "unique and unrepeatable", perfect and exemplary, an "alter Christus" and a new guide for the Christian people. So said his contemporaries and his later biographers. Among them St. Bonaventure, in his Legenda maior, counted among the masterpieces of medieval hagiography, sums up his figure and exceptional mission by saying that "the grace of God our Saviour has appeared in His servant Francis", to call all to follow his example and to desire eternal things.
According to St. Bonaventure, Francis is a teacher, guide and herald of Gospel perfection, sent to enlighten believers on the way of salvation. He is a new sign of peace and salvation, who himself became an angel of true peace, full of the prophetic spirit and bearing the seal of the living God, to call the chosen to penance. Finally, he is "a messenger dear to Christ and to us, given as a model to imitate and to the world as a marvel" (Legenda maior, prol. 1-2).
When we consider St. Francis in himself and against the background of his age, in its religious and social context, everything confirms his exceptional place and the beneficial influence he had then and has today as the renewer of the Gospel spirit, whether among the Christian people or in monastic and religious life.
It is true that almost all the motives of the spirituality, piety and religious action of Francis as a renewer of Christian life can already be found in the spiritual pulse of "Christian society" from the 11th to the 13th century. Yet these motives and reforms aimed at a return to Gospel life had had too little effect, despite many attempts by old and new religious institutes and by other preachers, orthodox and heretical. Only now, through the work of our Saint, did they find fertile ground in souls and in history.
The originality and effectiveness of his message showed itself in a peaceful integration into the community of the Church: on the one hand through respect for and full agreement with the hierarchy, and on the other through creative participation in the deep longings shared by all: for a livelier faith and liturgical piety, for the renewal of Christian life, for reconciliation and cooperation with priests, for the restoration of peace and for social brotherhood.
Francis worked from within, with great simplicity and humility, without rebellion or protest against anyone, personally giving the example of a truly poor and Gospel life.
With his brothers he made himself equal with the common people, the minores, and among the upper classes, the maiores, he preached the simple truths of the Gospel.
The content of St. Francis's preaching and the particular expressions of his personality effectively countered the propaganda of the heretics, the Cathars, Waldensians and Patarines, especially with regard to the saving passion and death of Jesus, the Son of God, and His real presence in the Eucharist, the irreplaceable dignity and value of the priestly ministry, and the natural goodness of creation...
Gathering up the desires of many people to lead a more perfect Christian life, the Saint gave them a rule of life and showed a way of perfection "suited to every state, age and sex" (1 Cel 37). And so the Third Order of Franciscan Penitents emerged spontaneously.
To all social classes, united by the same ideal, he brought a new spark of Christian life and of the lay apostolate, which spread his spiritual influence still further. It is therefore fitting that in 1916 the Church proclaimed St. Francis patron of Catholic Action.
As founder of religious communities, St. Francis in his "rule of the Gospel" called for the observance of the way of life that Jesus Christ preached and lived with His disciples. That is why at the beginning of his Rule he set down the principle: "The rule and life of the Friars Minor is this: to observe the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ by living in obedience, without anything of one's own, and in chastity" (Pisma św. Franciszka z Asyżu [Writings of St. Francis of Assisi], Warsaw 1976, p. 83).
He took no inspiration from earlier founders, Saints Augustine, Bernard or Benedict, but appealed solely to the direct "revelation" of the Lord. It was the way of simplicity, humility and poverty. Here lies the novelty and originality of the Saint, which became the typical expression of the new mendicant and apostolic orders in the Church.
Historians have pointed to many aspects and motives of the Poverello's personality. Above all they have seen in him the perfect imitator of Jesus Christ. They have pointed to his historical and human personality. They have described him as a knight of Christ, as the Saint of universal brotherhood, as the "Little Poor Man" par excellence, as the religious and poetic genius of his homeland, and so on. All these human and religious gifts of his cannot be denied. Thanks to them every category of people could, and still can, draw inspiration, guidance and example from every aspect of his radiant life.
For human and Christian society, however, his Gospel ideal is of the first importance. Comparing his times and his teaching with today's way of understanding things, we easily discover that the core of his message is still relevant: a message of goodness and love, and action for humanity in the name of Christ, bringing reconciliation with God, with the Church and among people.
Amid the progress and regress of human coexistence today, the idea the Saint instilled in his brothers, the idea of poverty, remains relevant. It is a simple reminder of the supernatural goal of life, so often and so easily forgotten; it is "the law of pilgrims", the awareness that earthly existence is temporary. From this comes the duty of everyone to journey peacefully towards the homeland (Lorenzo Di Fonzo, Św. Franciszek z Asyżu [St. Francis of Assisi], in: Bracia Mniejsi Konwentualni [The Conventual Friars Minor], Niepokalanów 1988, pp. 8-30).