St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis of Assisi

Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, known to history as Francis of Assisi, was born around 1181 in Assisi, a small town in Italy. He was the son of Pietro di Bernardone dei Moriconi, a prosperous silk merchant, and Pica di Bourlemont, a French noblewoman originally from Provence. His mother named him Giovanni, but his father, returning from business in France, called him Francesco, meaning “Free man” or “Frenchman,” possibly in honor of his commercial success and love of French culture.

Francis grew up with comfort and privilege. As a young man he was high-spirited, witty, gallant, fond of fine clothes, and fascinated by troubadours and all things Transalpine. Yet signs of unease with wealth appeared early. In one account, while selling cloth and velvet for his father, he left his goods behind to run after a beggar and gave the man everything in his purse. His friends mocked him, and his father scolded him in anger. Around 1202, Francis joined a military expedition against Perugia, was captured at Collestrada, and spent a year as a prisoner. Illness during captivity led him to re-evaluate his life, though he briefly returned to his former ways after coming home to Assisi.

A further break came after Francis set out for Apulia to enlist in the army of Walter III, Count of Brienne. A strange vision made him return to Assisi and lose interest in worldly life. On a pilgrimage to Rome, he joined the poor in begging at St. Peter’s Basilica. Later, in the ruined chapel of San Damiano, he said he had a mystical vision of Jesus Christ, who told him, “Francis, Francis, go and repair My church which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.” Francis first took this literally. He sold cloth from his father’s store to help the priest there, then faced his father’s wrath, legal action, and finally renounced his father and inheritance before the Bishop of Assisi.

Poverty, preaching, and the Franciscans

Francis then lived as a beggar in the hills behind Assisi, worked for a time as a scullion at a nearby monastery, and restored ruined chapels, including San Damiano and the Porziuncola, the little chapel of St. Mary of the Angels. By degrees he also took to nursing lepers in the colonies near Assisi. In February 1208, while attending Mass at St. Mary of the Angels, he heard the Gospel account of Jesus sending the Twelve to proclaim the Kingdom of God. Francis was inspired to live in poverty, became a beggar and itinerant preacher, and founded the religious order of the Franciscans.

Francis became one of the most venerated figures in Christianity. In 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, he went to Egypt in an attempt to convert the sultan Al-Kamil and end the conflict. In 1223, he arranged the first live nativity scene as part of the Christmas celebration in Greccio. Christian tradition says that in 1224 he displayed stigmata resembling the wounds of the crucified Christ after the apparition of a seraphic angel in religious ecstasy. He died on 3 October 1226 and was canonized by Pope Gregory IX on 16 July 1228. Associated with animals, the environment, poverty, chastity, obedience, and devotion to the Eucharist, Francis remains a figure whose words and example still speak plainly: a wealthy merchant’s son who chose poverty, repair, mercy, and a life close to the poor.