Francis of Assisi
Saint Francis of Assisi (born at Assisi, Italy, around 1182; died there October 3, 1226) founded the Franciscan Order or "Friars Minor".
Pietro Bernardone, his father, was a wealthy cloth merchant. Of his mother, Pica, little is known. Francis was one of several children. He was baptized 'Giovanni', and 'Francesco' was a nickname - whether because of his father's fondness for France, or the French (Provencal) literature popular at the time, or perhaps his mother's origin is not clear.
Text to integrate from Schaff-Herzog Encyc of Religion:
From the designation Fratres minores the
members of the Franciscan order were called Minorites,
and in England they were popularly called Grey
Friars from the color of their dress.
I. Life of Saint Francis.
1. Boyhood and Early Manhood.
Giovanni Bernardore,
commonly known as Francesco, the founder
of the Franciscan order, was born in the little
town of Assisi, in Central Italy, between Perugia
and Foligno, in 1182. His father Pietro, a
well-to-do merchant;gave the boy a good education. The
name of Francesco ("the French-man"),
by which his baptismal name
was soon altogether replaced, is said
to have been given him soon after his
birth by his father, returning to Assisi from a trip
to France; according to another account it was
due to his early acquisition of the French language.
Francis showed little inclination to concern
himself with his father's business, but lived a happy life
with the young men of his own age. In 1201 he
joined a military expedition against Perugia, was
taken prisoner, and spent a year as a captive. It
is probable that his conversion to more serious
thoughts was gradual.
It is said that when he
began to avoid the sports of his former companions,
and they asked him laughingly if he were
thinking of marrying, he answered "Yes, a fairer
bride than any you have ever seen"-- meaning his
"lady poverty," as he afterward used to say. He
spent much time in lonely places, asking God for
enlightenment. By degrees he took to nursing the
most repulsive victims in the lazar-houses near
Assisi.
After a pilgrimage to Rome, where he
begged at the church doors for the poor, he had a
vision in which he heard a voice calling upon him
to restore the Church of God which had fallen into
decay. He referred this to the ruined church of
St. Damian near Assisi, and sold his horse together
with some cloth from his father's store, giving the
proceeds to the priest for this purpose. Pietro,
highly indignant, attempted to bring him to his
senses, first with threats and then with corporal
chastisement. After a final interview in the
presence of the bishop, Francis renounced all
expectations from his father, laying aside even the
garments received from him, and for a while was a
homeless wanderer in the hills around Assisi.
Returning to the town, where he spent two years at
this time, he restored several ruined churches,
among them the little chapel of St. Mary of the
Angels, just outside the town, which became later
his favorite abode.
2. The Beginning of the Brotherhood.
At the end of this period (according to Jordanus,
in 1209), a sermon which he heard on Matt. x. 9
made such an impression on him that he decided to
devote himself wholly to a life of apostolic poverty.
Clad in a rough garment, barefoot, and,
after the Evangelical precept, without
staff or scrip, he began to preach
repentance.
He was soon joined by a
prominent fellow townsman, Bernardo
di Quintavalle, who contributed all that he had to
the work, and by other companions, who are said
to have reached the number of eleven within a
year. The brothers lived in the deserted
lazar-house of Rivo Torto near Assisi; but they spent
much of their time traveling through the
mountainous districts of Umbria, always cheerful and
full of songs, yet making a deep impression on their
hearers by their earnest exhortations.
Their life was
extremely ascetic, though such practises were
apparently not prescribed by the first rule which Francis
gave them (probably as early as 1209), which
seems to have been nothing more than a collection
of Scriptural passages emphasizing the duty of
poverty.
In spite of the obvious similarity
between this principle and the fundamental ideas of
the followers of Peter Waldo, the brotherhood of
Assisi succeeded in gaining the approval of
Pope Innocent III. Many legends have clustered
around the decisive audience of Francis with the
pope. The realistic account in Matthew of Paris,
according to which the pope originally sent the
shabby saint off to keep swine, and only
recognized his real worth by his ready obedience, has,
in spite of its improbability, a certain historical
interest, since it shows the natural antipathy of
the older Benedictine monasticism to the plebeian
mendicant orders.
3. Work and Extension of the Brotherhood.
It was not, however, a life of idle mendicancy on
which the brothers entered when they set out in
1210 with the papal approbation, but one of
diligent labor. Their work embraced devoted
service in the abodes of sickness and poverty, earnest
preaching by both priests and lay
brothers, and missions in an ever
widening circle, which finally included
heretics and Mohammedans. They
came together every year at
Pentecost in the little church of the Portiuncula at Assisi,
to report on their experiences and strengthen
themselves for fresh efforts.
There is considerable
uncertainty as to the chronological and historical
details of the last fifteen years of the founder's life.
But to these years belong the accounts of the
origin of the first houses in Perugia, Crotona, Pisa,
Florence, and elsewhere (1211-13); the first
attempts at a Mohammedan mission, in the sending
of five brothers, soon to be martyrs, to Morocco, as
well as in a journey undertaken by Francis himself
to Spain, from which he was forced by illness to
return without accomplishing his object; the first
settlements in the Spanish peninsula and in France;
and the attempts, unsuccessful at first, to gain a
foothold in Germany. The alleged meeting of
Francis and Dominic in Rome at the time of the
Fourth Lateran Council (1215) belongs to the
domain of legend; even Sabatier's argument to show
that such a meeting actually took place in 1218
is open to serious objection.
Historical in the
main are the accounts relating to the journey of
Francis to Egypt and Palestine, where he attempted
to convert the Sultan Kameel and gave fearless
proofs of his readiness to suffer for his faith; the
internal discord, which he found existing in the
order on his return to Italy in 1220; the origin of
his second and considerably enlarged rule, which
was replaced two years later by the final form,
drawn up by Cardinal Ugolino; and possibly the
granting by Pope Honorius III (in 1223) of
the Indulgence of the Portiuncula-- a document
which Sabatier, who formerly rejected it, has
recently pronounced authentic on noteworthy
grounds.
4. The Last Years of Francis.
Francis had to suffer from the dissensions just
alluded to and the transformation which they
operated in the originally simple constitution of the
brotherhood, making it a regular order under strict
supervision from Rome. Especially after Cardinal
Ugolino had been assigned as
protector of the order by Honorius III.-- it
is said at Francis' own request-- he
saw himself forced further and further
away from his original plan. Even the independent
direction of his brotherhood was, it seems,
finally withdrawn from him; at least after about
1223 it was practically in the hands of Brother
Elias of Crotona, an ambitious politician who
seconded the attempts of the cardinal-protector to
transform the character of the order.
However,
in the external successes of the brothers, as they
were reported at the yearly general chapters, there
was much to encourage Francis. Caesarius of
Speyer, the first German provincial, a zealous
advocate of the founder's strict principle of poverty,
began in 1221 from Augsburg, with twenty-five
companions, to win for the order the land watered
by the Rhine and the Danube; and a few years
later the Franciscan propaganda, starting from
Cambridge, embraced the principal towns of
England.
But none of these cheering reports could
wholly drive away from the mind of Francis the
gloom which covered his last years. He spent
much of his time in solitude, praying or singing
praise to God for his wonderful works. The
canticle known as Laudes creaturarum, with its
childlike invocations to Brother Sun, Sister Moon with
the stars, Brother Wind, Sister Water, Brother
Fire, and finally Sister Death, to raise their
voices to the glory of God, dates from this period
of his life.
The hermit stage which opened the
career of many monastic founders was reserved
for the end of his who had once been so restless in
his activity. He spent the short remainder of his
life partly on Monte Alverno on the upper Arno,
where he fasted forty days and longed for union
with God, to be demonstrated by the impression
on his body of the wounds of Christ (see
STIGMATIZATION); partly at Rieti under medical
treatment; and partly in his beloved Portiuncula at
Assisi waiting for his deliverance from the flesh.
He died Oct. 3, 1226, at Assisi, and was canonized
two years later by Pope Gregory IX., the former
cardinal-protector of the order.