Libra13

Today, October 4, is the memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi (c. 1181/82 – 3 October 1226)—the observance of which is superseded this year by the Sunday liturgy. Born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone in Assisi, in what was then the duchy of Spoleto, he was the son of Pietro di Bernardone, a wealthy cloth merchant. His father, away in France at the time of the birth, later nicknamed him Francesco (“the Frenchman”). As a young man he lived the life of a well-off, pleasure-seeking townsman and briefly sought knighthood. Captured in a war between Assisi and Perugia and held for nearly a year, he returned ill. A series of experiences then turned him: a vision that called him back from a military venture, prayer in a cave near Assisi, begging among the poor in Rome, and kissing the hand of a man with leprosy whom he had previously recoiled from. Around 1205–1206 he heard a crucifix in the ruined chapel of San Damiano say, “Go, repair my house.” He took the words literally at first, selling cloth from his father’s stock to fund repairs. When his father hauled him before the bishop, Francis stripped off his clothes in public and returned them, renouncing his inheritance. He then lived as a wandering penitent, repairing chapels, caring for the sick, and preaching repentance and poverty in imitation of Christ and the apostles. Companions gathered around him. In 1209 Pope Innocent III orally approved a simple rule based on Gospel passages about poverty and mission; the Order of Friars Minor (the Franciscans) grew quickly from that. With Clare of Assisi he helped found the women’s Order of Poor Ladies, later the Poor Clares. A Third Order for laypeople followed. In 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, he crossed to Egypt and met Sultan al-Kamil, seeking a peaceful audience rather than joining the fighting. In 1223 at Greccio he arranged what is often called the first live nativity scene. In September 1224, while praying on Mount La Verna, he is said to have seen a seraph bearing the figure of the crucified Christ; afterward he bore the stigmata—wounds in his hands, feet, and side—until his death. Nearly blind and weakened, he composed the Canticle of the Creatures (or Canticle of the Sun), one of the earliest substantial poems in Italian, praising God through sun, moon, wind, water, fire, and earth, and even through “Sister Death.” He died on the evening of 3 October 1226 at the Portiuncula near Assisi, and was canonized by Pope Gregory IX on 16 July 1228. His major shrine is the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. He is patron of Italy (with Catherine of Siena), of animals, and—since 1979, by recognition of Pope John Paul II—of ecology. The familiar image of him preaching to birds comes from early biographies and from the fresco cycles, especially Giotto’s, in Assisi.