Francis of Assisi

Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone was born in 1181 or 1182 in Assisi, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. His father Pietro called him Francesco — "the Frenchman" — possibly for his mother's French origins or Pietro's business ties to France. The young Francis lived the expected life of a merchant's son: fashionable clothes, easy money, dreams of knightly glory. In 1202 he joined Assisi's war against neighboring Perugia, was captured and imprisoned for a year. He returned home ill and somehow changed. A second attempt at military adventure in 1205 ended when he turned back after what he described as a divine vision.

The conversion deepened in stages. Praying in the ruined church of San Damiano outside Assisi, Francis heard Christ speak from the crucifix: "Go and repair my house, which you see is falling down." He took this literally at first, selling his father's cloth to fund church repairs. Pietro was furious. In 1206, hauled before the bishop's court, Francis stripped off his expensive clothes and declared: "Until now I have called Pietro Bernardone my father. From now on I can say with complete freedom, 'Our Father who art in heaven.'" He had chosen absolute poverty as his bride.

Francis spent the next three years in solitude and prayer, rebuilding churches stone by stone, caring for lepers whose diseased flesh had previously revolted him. In 1208, hearing the Gospel reading of Christ's commissioning of the disciples — "Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey" — he found his vocation. He began preaching repentance in the streets of Assisi. The first followers came quickly: Bernard of Quintavalle, a wealthy man who sold everything; Peter Catanii; Giles of Assisi. They called themselves the "Little Brothers" — Fratres Minores.

By 1209 there were twelve of them. Francis wrote a simple rule based on Gospel texts and set out for Rome to seek papal approval. Pope Innocent III initially hesitated — the group looked suspiciously like other reformist movements the church had condemned as heretical. But Francis's obvious orthodoxy and submission to church authority won approval. The Franciscan movement had begun. Growth was explosive: perhaps 3,000 friars by 1221. Francis sent them throughout Europe and beyond — to Morocco, the Holy Land, northern Europe. In 1212, Clare of Assisi, a young noblewoman, embraced Franciscan poverty and founded what became the Poor Clares, the women's branch of the movement.

The success created problems Francis never anticipated. The order required organization, legal structures, and administrative compromises that conflicted with his vision of radical simplicity. After 1220 he gradually withdrew from governing the Franciscans, devoting himself to prayer and preaching. In September 1224, while fasting on Mount La Verna, Francis received the stigmata — the wounds of Christ's crucifixion appeared in his hands, feet, and side. He was the first recorded case of this phenomenon. Two years later, nearly blind and in constant pain, he died at the Porziuncola, the small chapel that had become the center of his movement. He was canonized in 1228.

His Writing and Influence

Francis was not a systematic theologian or prolific author. His writings consist of rules for his religious communities, letters to followers, prayers, and spiritual exhortations — practical texts for practical purposes. The Rule of 1223, his final version of the Franciscan constitution, distills his vision into legislative form while preserving its radical edge: "The brothers shall not acquire anything as their own, neither a house, nor a place, nor anything at all." His Testament, dictated near death, reveals his fear that the movement was already softening: "I strictly forbid all the brothers to put glosses on the Rule and on these words saying: 'This is what they mean.' As the Lord gave me to speak and write the Rule and these words simply and purely, so you are to understand them simply and purely."

The Canticle of the Creatures, composed during his final illness, represents something new in Christian literature — a hymn of cosmic praise that addresses the sun, moon, wind, and fire as siblings. "Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape." Here is the theological heart of Franciscan spirituality: creation as family, poverty as freedom, suffering as participation in Christ's passion.

Francis's immediate impact on medieval Christianity was revolutionary. The Franciscan movement, alongside the Dominicans, transformed religious life in the thirteenth century. Unlike traditional monasticism, which withdrew to countryside monasteries, the friars worked in towns and cities, preaching to laypeople in the vernacular, caring for the poor and sick. Francis himself became the subject of intense devotion within decades of his death. Thomas of Celano's biographies, Bonaventure's official life, and the Fioretti ("Little Flowers") created the literary image of the "poor man of Assisi" that has endured for eight centuries.

The longer influence has been equally profound. Franciscan theology, developed by Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and others, emphasized the primacy of love over knowledge, experience over speculation. The Franciscan understanding of creation — as God's second book of revelation — helped lay intellectual groundwork for later scientific development. Francis's environmental sensibility, dormant for centuries, has found new resonance in an ecological age. His witness to radical poverty continues to challenge Christian accommodation to wealth and power.

Who should read Francis: Readers who suspect that Christianity requires a more demanding relationship to possessions, creation, and suffering than contemporary church culture typically acknowledges. He is essential for anyone exploring the tradition of Christian mysticism, environmental theology, or the history of religious reform movements. He is not for those seeking theological sophistication or systematic doctrine. Francis is for those who want to know what it looks like to take the Sermon on the Mount literally.