Who Was St. Francis?

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St. Francis of Assisi

Saint Francis of Assisi (Italian: San Francesco d'Assisi, Latin: Sanctus Franciscus Assisiensis), built-in Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, informally named as Francesco (1181/1182 – 3 Oct 1226), was an Italian Cosmic friar, deacon and preacher.

A SAINT FOR ALL PEOPLE

(Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Francis of Assisi was born in tardily 1181 or early 1182, one of several children of an Italian begetter, Pietro di Bernardone dei Moriconi, a prosperous silk merchant, and a French mother, Pica de Bourlemont, nigh whom little is known except that she was a noblewoman originally from Provence. Pietro was in France on business when Francis was born in Assisi, and Pica had him baptized as Giovanni. Upon his return to Assisi, Pietro took to calling his son Francesco ("the Frenchman"), possibly in laurels of his commercial success and enthusiasm for all things French. Since the child was renamed in infancy, the change tin can hardly have had anything to practise with his aptitude for learning French, as some have thought.

Indulged by his parents, Francis lived the loftier-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man. Every bit a youth, Francesco became a devotee of troubadours and was fascinated with all things Transalpine.  He was handsome, witty, gallant, and delighted in fine wearing apparel. He spent money lavishly. Although many hagiographers remark nearly his vivid habiliment, rich friends, and love of pleasures,  his displays of disillusionment toward the world that surrounded him came fairly early on in his life, as is shown in the "story of the beggar". In this account, he was selling cloth and velvet in the market place on behalf of his father when a beggar came to him and asked for alms. At the determination of his concern deal, Francis abandoned his wares and ran after the beggar. When he establish him, Francis gave the man everything he had in his pockets. His friends quickly chided and mocked him for his human action of charity. When he got home, his father scolded him in rage.

Around 1202, he joined a military expedition against Perugia and was taken as a prisoner at Collestrada, spending a year as a convict.  An illness caused him to re-evaluate his life. It is possible that his spiritual conversion was a gradual process rooted in this experience. 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, having lost his gustatory modality for the worldly life. According to hagiographic accounts, thereafter he began to avert the sports and the feasts of his erstwhile companions. In response, they asked him laughingly whether he was thinking of marrying, to which he answered, "Yeah, a fairer helpmate than any of you have ever seen", meaning his "Lady Poverty".

Saint Francis Abandons His Father. Francis of Assisi breaking off his relationship with his father and renouncing his patrimony, laying aside publicly even the garments he had received from him.

On a pilgrimage to Rome, he joined the poor in begging at St. Peter's Basilica. He spent some time in lonely places, request God for spiritual enlightenment. 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 house which, every bit you can run across, is falling into ruins." He took this to mean the ruined church building in which he was presently praying, and and then he sold some cloth from his father's store to assistance the priest in that location for this purpose. When the priest refused to accept the ill-gotten gains, an indignant Francis threw the coins on the floor.

In order to avoid his begetter's wrath, Francis hid in a cavern near San Damiano for most a month. When he returned to boondocks, hungry and dirty, he was dragged home by his father, browbeaten, bound, and locked in a minor storeroom. Freed by his mother during Bernardone's absenteeism, Francis returned at in one case to San Damiano, where he found shelter with the officiating priest, merely he was soon cited before the city consuls by his begetter. The latter, not content with having recovered the scattered golden from San Damiano, sought also to forcefulness his son to forego his inheritance by way of restitution. In the midst of legal proceedings before the Bishop of Assisi, Francis renounced his male parent and his patrimony. Some accounts study that he stripped himself naked in token of this renunciation, and the Bishop covered him with his own cloak.

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 every bit a scullion. He and 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'south. These he carried to the quondam chapel, set in place himself, and and then at length rebuilt it. Over the class 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 individual holding and once again in ruin); and the Porziuncola, the footling chapel of St. Mary of the Angels in the plain just beneath the town. This later became his favorite abode.  By degrees he took to nursing lepers, in the lazar houses most Assisi.

Basilica of St. Francis, Perugia, Italy

Basilica of St. Francis, Perugia, Italy

Map of Assisi, Perugia, Italy

Map of Assisi, Perugia, Italian republic

Founding of the Franciscan Orders

One morn in February 1208, Francis was hearing Mass in the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, near which he had then built himself a hut. The Gospel of the 24-hour interval was the "Commissioning of the Twelve" from the Book of Matthew. The disciples are 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 fibroid woolen tunic, the clothes then worn by the poorest Umbrian peasants, he tied it around him with a knotted rope and went along at one time exhorting the people of the country-side to penance, brotherly honey, and peace. Francis' preaching to ordinary people was unusual since he had no license to practise so.

His example drew others to him. Within a year Francis had eleven followers. The brothers lived a simple life in the deserted lazar firm of Rivo Torto near Assisi; simply they spent much of their fourth dimension wandering through the mountainous districts of Umbria, making a deep impression upon their hearers past their earnest exhortations.

In 1209 he composed a simple dominion for his followers ("friars"), the Regula primitiva or "Primitive Rule", which came from verses in the Bible. The dominion was "To follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in his footsteps". He then led his get-go eleven followers to Rome to seek permission from Pope Innocent III to found a new religious Order. Upon entry to Rome, the brothers encountered Bishop Guido of Assisi, who had in his company Giovanni di San Paolo, the Central 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. Reluctantly, Pope Innocent agreed to meet with Francis and the brothers the side by side day. Afterwards several days, the pope agreed to acknowledge the group informally, adding that when God increased the group in grace and number, they could return for an official admittance. The group was tonsured. This was important in part because it recognized Church dominance and prevented his following from possible accusations of heresy, as had happened to the Waldensians decades before. Though a number of the Pope'south counselors considered the style of life proposed by Francis as dangerous and impractical, following a dream in which he saw Francis holding up the Basilica of St. John Lateran (the cathedral of Rome, thus the 'home church' of all Christendom), he decided to endorse Francis' Order. This occurred, according to tradition, on 16 April 1210, and constituted the official founding of the Franciscan Order. The group, then the "Bottom Brothers" (Society of Friars Small-scale also known as the Franciscan Order or the Seraphic Order), were centered in the Porziuncola and preached start in Umbria, before expanding throughout Italy. Francis chose never to be ordained a priest, although he was after ordained a deacon.

Co-ordinate to some late sources, the Sultan gave Francis permission to visit the sacred places in the Holy Country and even to preach there. All that tin 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. Cartoon on a 1267 sermon by Bonaventure, later sources report that the Sultan secretly converted or accepted a death-bed baptism equally a result of the encounter with Francis.[38] The Franciscan Gild has been present in the Holy State almost uninterruptedly since 1217 when Brother Elias arrived at Acre. Information technology received concessions from the Mameluke Sultan in 1333 with regard to certain Holy Places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and (and then far as concerns the Catholic Church) jurisdictional privileges from Pope Clement VI in 1342.

Reorganization of the Franciscan Order

By this fourth dimension, the growing Lodge of friars was divided into provinces and groups were sent to France, Germany, Hungary, and Spain and to the East. Upon receiving a report of the martyrdom of v brothers in Kingdom of morocco, Francis returned to Italy via Venice.  Primal Ugolino di Conti was then nominated by the Pope every bit the protector of the Order. Another reason for Francis' return to Italy was that the Franciscan Order had grown at an unprecedented charge per unit compared to previous religious orders, merely its organizational sophistication had not kept upwards with this growth and had little more than to govern it than Francis' example and elementary rule. To address this trouble, Francis prepared a new and more than detailed Rule, the "Commencement Dominion" or "Rule Without a Papal Balderdash" (Regula prima,Regula non bullata), which once more asserted devotion to poverty and the churchly life. Withal, it as well introduced greater institutional construction, though this was never officially endorsed by the pope.

On 29 September 1220, Francis handed over the governance of the Order to Brother Peter Catani at the Porziuncola, but Brother Peter died simply 5 months later, on ten March 1221, and was buried there. When numerous miracles were attributed to the deceased brother, people started to flock to the Porziuncola, disturbing the daily life of the Franciscans. Francis then prayed, asking Peter to stop the miracles and to obey in death equally he had obeyed during his life.

The reports of miracles ceased. Blood brother Peter was succeeded by Brother Elias equally Vicar of Francis. Two years subsequently, Francis modified the "Start Rule", creating the "Second Dominion" or "Rule With a Bull", which was approved by Pope Honorius III on 29 November 1223. As the official Rule of the Order, it called on the friars "to observe the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, living in obedience without anything of our ain and in chastity". In addition, information technology set regulations for subject, preaching, and entry into the Guild. In one case the Rule was endorsed by the Pope, Francis withdrew increasingly from external affairs. During 1221 and 1222, Francis crossed Italy, showtime as far southward as Catania in Sicily and afterwards as far north as Bologna.

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Stigmata, terminal days, and Sainthood

Francis considered his stigmata part of the Imitation of Christ.

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 14 September 1224, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, as a upshot of which he received the stigmata. Blood brother Leo, who had been with Francis at the time, left a articulate and simple account of the event, the first definite business relationship of the phenomenon of stigmata. "Suddenly he saw a vision of a seraph, a 6-winged angel on a cantankerous. This angel gave him the souvenir of the v wounds of Christ."[43] Suffering from these stigmata and from trachoma, Francis received care in several cities (Siena, Cortona, Nocera) to no avail. In the stop, he was brought back to a hut adjacent to the Porziuncola. Hither, in the identify where the Franciscan motility began, and feeling that the cease of his life was budgeted, he spent his last days dictating his spiritual attestation. He died on the evening of Saturday, iii October 1226, singing Psalm 142 (141),"Voce mea advertizing Dominum".

On 16 July 1228, he was pronounced a saint past Pope Gregory IX (the former cardinal Ugolino di Conti, friend of Saint Francis and Cardinal Protector of the Gild). The adjacent day, the Pope laid the foundation stone for the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. Francis was buried on 25 May 1230, under the Lower Basilica, but his tomb was soon hidden on orders of Blood brother Elias to protect it from Saracen invaders. His verbal burial place remained unknown until it was re-discovered in 1818. Pasquale Belli then constructed for the remains a crypt in neo-classical style in the Lower Basilica. It was refashioned between 1927 and 1930 into its present form past Ugo Tarchi, stripping the wall of its marble decorations. In 1978, the remains of Saint 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.

Character and legacy

Francis ready out to imitate Christ and literally carry out his work. This is important in understanding Francis' character, his affinity for the Eucharist and respect for the priests who carried out the sacrament.[3] He preached: "Your God is of your flesh, He lives in your nearest neighbour, in every man."

He and his followers celebrated and fifty-fifty venerated poverty, which was so cardinal to his character that in his last written piece of work, the Testament, he said that absolute personal and corporate poverty was the essential lifestyle for the members of his lodge.

He believed that nature itself was the mirror of God. He called all creatures his "brothers" and "sisters", and even preached to the birds and supposedly persuaded a wolf in Gubbio to terminate attacking some locals if they agreed to feed the wolf. In hisCanticle of the Creatures ("Praises of Creatures" or "Canticle of the Sunday"), he mentioned the "Brother Sun" and "Sis Moon", the wind and water. His deep sense of brotherhood under God embraced others, and he alleged that "he considered himself no friend of Christ if he did non cherish those for whom Christ died".

Francis' visit to Egypt and attempted rapprochement with the Muslim world had far-reaching consequences, long past his own death, since subsequently the autumn of the Crusader Kingdom, it would be the Franciscans, of all Catholics, who would exist immune to stay on in the Holy Land and be recognized equally "Custodians of the Holy Country" on behalf of the Catholic Church.

At Greccio near Assisi, around 1220, Francis celebrated Christmas by setting upwards the showtime knownpresepio orcrèche (Nativity scene).  His nativity imagery reflected the scene in traditional paintings. He used real animals to create a living scene then that the worshipers could contemplate the nativity of the child Jesus in a straight way, making utilise of the senses, particularly sight. Both Thomas of Celano and Saint Bonaventure, biographers of Saint Francis, tell how he used only a harbinger-filled manger (feeding trough) set between a existent ox and donkey.  Co-ordinate to Thomas, it was beautiful in its simplicity, with the manger acting as the altar for the Christmas Mass.

Nature and the surround

Francis preached the Christian doctrine that the world was created good and beautiful by God but suffers a need for redemption because of human sin. He believed that all creatures should praise God (a common theme in the Psalms) and the people have a duty to protect and enjoy nature as both the stewards of God's creation and every bit creatures ourselves. Many of the stories that environs the life of Saint Francis say that he had a bully honey for animals and the surroundings.

An incident illustrating the Saint's humility towards nature is recounted in the "Fioretti" ("Little Flowers"), a collection of legends and folklore that sprang up after the Saint'south death. One solar day, while Francis was traveling with some companions, they happened upon a place in the route where birds filled the trees on either side. Francis told his companions to "wait for me while I become to preach to my sisters the birds."  The birds surrounded him, intrigued by the power of his voice, and not one of them flew away. He is frequently portrayed with a bird, typically in his mitt.

Some other fable from theFioretti tells that in the city of Gubbio, where Francis lived for some time, was a wolf "terrifying and ferocious, who devoured men also as animals". Francis had compassion upon the townsfolk, and so he went up into the hills to find the wolf. Shortly, fear of the animal had caused all his companions to abscond, though the saint pressed on. When he found the wolf, he made the sign of the cross and commanded the wolf to come up to him and injure no i. Miraculously the wolf closed his jaws and lay down at Francis' feet.

"Brother Wolf, you exercise much damage in these parts and you have done not bad evil", said Francis. "All these people accuse you and curse you ... But brother wolf, I would like to make peace between you and the people." Then Francis led the wolf into the town, and surrounded by startled citizens made a pact betwixt them and the wolf. Because the wolf had "done evil out of hunger, the townsfolk were to feed the wolf regularly. In return, the wolf would no longer casualty upon them or their flocks. In this manner Gubbio was freed from the menace of the predator. Francis even fabricated a pact on behalf of the boondocks dogs, that they would non bother the wolf once again. Finally, to show the townspeople that they would not be harmed, Francis blessed the wolf.

Three-quarters of a millennium later on his death, St Francis remains an important figure and symbol in and out of Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches. On 29 Nov 1979, Pope John Paul II declared Saint Francis the Patron Saint of Environmental.] During the Earth Environment Mean solar day 1982, John Paul II said that Saint Francis' dear and care for cosmos was a challenge for contemporary Catholics and a reminder "not to comport similar dissident predators where nature is concerned, but to assume responsibility for it, taking all intendance and then that everything stays healthy and integrated, and so equally to offer a welcoming and friendly surround even to those who succeed the states." The same Pope wrote on the occasion of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 1990, the saint of Assisi "offers Christians an example of genuine and deep respect for the integrity of creation ..." He went on to make the point that: "As a friend of the poor who was loved by God's creatures, Saint Francis invited all of creation – animals, plants, natural forces, even Brother Sun and Sister Moon – to requite laurels and praise to the Lord. The poor homo of Assisi gives us hit witness that when we are at peace with God we are meliorate able to devote ourselves to building up that peace with all creation which is inseparable from peace among all peoples."[49]

Pope John Paul II concluded that section of the document with these words, "Information technology is my promise that the inspiration of Saint Francis will help united states of america to go on ever alive a sense of 'fraternity' with all those good and beautiful things which Almighty God has created."

Feast twenty-four hour period

Saint Francis' feast day is observed on iv Oct.

St. Francis in Anglicanism

The 20th century High Church Movement gave nascency to Franciscan inspired orders amongst revival of religious orders in Protestant Christianity.

1 of the results of the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church during the 19th century was the re-institution of religious orders, including some of Franciscan inspiration. The principal Anglican communities in the Franciscan tradition are the Community of St. Francis (women, founded 1905), the Poor Clares of Reparation (P.C.R.), the Society of Saint Francis (men, founded 1934), and the Customs of St. Clare (women, enclosed).

A U.Due south.-founded order within the Anglican world communion is the Seattle-founded order of Clares in Seattle (Diocese of Olympia), The Little Sisters of St. Clare.

There are as well some pocket-size Franciscan communities within European Protestantism and the Sometime Catholic Church.  At that place are some Franciscan orders in Lutheran Churches, including the Order of Lutheran Franciscans, the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, and the Evangelische Kanaan Franziskus-Bruderschaft (Kanaan Franciscan Brothers). In addition, there are associations of Franciscan inspiration not connected with a mainstream Christian tradition and describing themselves as ecumenical or dispersed.

The Anglican church building retained the Cosmic tradition of blessing animals on or near Francis' feast solar day of 4 October, and more recently Lutheran and other Protestant churches take adopted the practice.

From then on, the new Order grew apace with new vocations. Hearing Francis preaching in the church of San Rufino in Assisi in 1211, the young noblewoman Clare of Assisi became deeply touched by his bulletin and realized her calling. Her cousin Rufino, the just male fellow member of the family in their generation, was too attracted to the new Order, which he joined. On the nighttime of Palm Sunday, 28 March 1212, Clare clandestinely left her family's palace. Francis received her at the Porziuncola and thereby established the Club of Poor Ladies. This was an Order for women, and he gave Clare a religious addiction, or garment, similar to his ain, before lodging her in a nearby monastery of Benedictine nuns until he could provide a suitable retreat for her, and for her younger sister, Caterina, and the other young women who had joined her. Later he transferred them to San Damiano,[3] to a few small huts or cells of wattle, straw, and mud, and enclosed by a hedge. This became the beginning monastery of the Second Franciscan Order, now known as Poor Clares.

For those who could not exit their homes, he later formed the Tertiary Social club of Brothers and Sisters of Penance, a fraternity composed of either laity or clergy whose members neither withdrew from the globe nor took religious vows. Instead, they observed the principles of Franciscan life in their daily lives. Before long, this Third Order grew across Italia. The Third Social club is at present titled the Secular Franciscan Order.

Travels

Determined to bring the Gospel to all peoples of the World, Francis sought on several occasions to take his message out of Italy. In the late spring of 1212, he set out for Jerusalem, just was shipwrecked by a storm on the Dalmatiancoast, forcing him to return to Italia. On eight May 1213, he was given the apply of the mountain of La Verna (Alverna) as a gift from Count Orlando di Chiusi, who described information technology as "eminently suitable for whoever wishes to practice penance in a identify remote from flesh".  The mountain would become one of his favourite retreats for prayer.

In the aforementioned year, Francis sailed for Morocco, only this fourth dimension an disease forced him to break off his journey in Spain. Back in Assisi, several noblemen (among them Tommaso da Celano, who would later write the biography of St. Francis), and some well-educated men joined his Order. In 1215, Francis may have gone to Rome for the Fourth Lateran Council, but that is not certain. During this fourth dimension, he probably met a canon, Dominic de Guzman[vi] (subsequently to be Saint Dominic, the founder of the Friars Preachers, another Catholic religious club). In 1217, he offered to go to France. Cardinal Ugolino of Segni (the future Pope Gregory Ix), an early on and important supporter of Francis, advised him against this and said that he was notwithstanding needed in Italy.

In 1219, accompanied by another friar and hoping to convert the Sultan of Egypt or win martyrdom in the effort, Francis went to Egypt during the 5th Crusade where a Crusader army had been encamped for over a year besieging the walled city of Damietta two miles (3.2 kilometres) upstream from the mouth of one of the chief channels of the Nile. The Sultan, al-Kamil, a nephew of Saladin, had succeeded his father equally Sultan of Egypt in 1218 and was encamped upstream of Damietta, unable to relieve it. 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 which lasted four weeks. Information technology was most probably during this interlude that Francis and his companion crossed the Muslims' lines and were brought before the Sultan, remaining in his camp for a few days. The visit is reported in contemporary Crusader sources and in the earliest biographies of Francis, but they give no information about what transpired during the encounter across noting that the Sultan received Francis graciously and that Francis preached to the Muslims without event, returning unharmed to the Crusader camp.  No contemporary Arab source mentions the visit] One detail, added by Bonaventure in the official life of Francis (written forty years after the upshot), has Francis offer to challenge the Sultan'due south "priests" to trial-by-fire in order to testify the veracity of the Christian Gospel.

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.  It has been suggested that the winged figures atop the columns piercing the roof of the building on the left of the scene are not idols (as Erwin Panofsky had proposed) but are part of the secular iconography of the sultan, affirming his worldly ability which, every bit the scene demonstrates, is limited fifty-fifty every bit regards his ain "priests" who shun the claiming.  Although Bonaventure asserts that the sultan refused to let the challenge, subsequent biographies went farther, claiming that a burn down was really kindled which Francis unhesitatingly entered without suffering burns. The scene in the fresco adopts a position midway between the two extremes. Since the thought was put forward by the German fine art historian, Friedrich Rintelen in 1912,  many scholars take expressed doubt that Giotto was the writer of the Upper Church building frescoes.