FRANCIS OF ASSISI, saint. - Founder of three religious Orders (Friars Minor, Poor Clares, Franciscan Third Order), patron of Catholic Action; together with St. Catherine of Siena, principal patron of Italy, also called by the appellations "seraphic patriarch", "father of the poor", etc. B. at Assisi toward the end of 1181 or the beginning of 1182, d. there on the evening of Oct. 3, 1226.
I. YOUTH
Son of Pietro di Bernardone, a rich cloth merchant, and of a woman named Pica, perhaps of noble lineage. Nothing certain is known about his paternal family, which some erroneously claimed to be of Lucca origin, nor about the supposed Provençal origins of his mother. At Baptism he received the name John, later changed by his father, on his return from Provence, to that of Francis. He attended school at the church of St. George, where he learned the Latin language, to which he later added a certain knowledge of the French language and literature, especially that of the troubadours.
Endowed with exquisite natural qualities, in his youth he loved the splendor of wealth and of dress, the frequenting of banquets and merry companies, the poetry of love, the glory of warlike enterprises. The gay youth of F. is presented differently by the sources: Thomas of Celano and other legends perhaps darken the shades by literary artifice, while St. Bonaventure and the legend known as "of the three companions," which for the most part is devoted to the youthful years of F., paints it as pure, unsullied, generous.
In 1202 he took part in the war between Assisi and Perugia; he remained a prisoner for almost a year, cheering his companions in misfortune with his bold gaiety. An illness contracted after the imprisonment was the first touch of Grace, which began to turn his heart away from his usual affections. After a new attempt at military glory (perhaps he dreamed of becoming a knight), cut short by a mysterious vision he had at Spoleto while he had already set out for Apulia as a volunteer in the militias of Walter of Brienne, he returned to Assisi prey to uncertainty about the direction to give his own life.
II. THE CONVERSION
He gave himself over to a life of prayer and penance, at first frequenting a cave near his native city; he drew closer to the poor (on a journey to Rome, he exchanged clothes with a poor man and began to beg at the door of St. Peter's); he began to devote himself to the care of lepers, until, in the small church of St. Damian outside the walls of Assisi, he heard the Crucifix speak to him: "Go, F., restore my house, which, as you see, threatens ruin." He then interpreted the command literally and set about restoring the church of St. Damian, and the other two little churches of St. Peter and St. Mary of the Angels (the Portiuncula). Thus he resolved to "leave the world"; his father Pietro di Bernardone opposed so many apparent oddities, first by shutting his son in a closet under the stairs, from which he was freed by his mother; then by resorting to the tribunal of the consuls. But F. appealed, as a religious, to the ecclesiastical tribunal and before the bishop of Assisi renounced everything, giving back to his father even his clothes, with the famous words: "From now on I shall no longer call Pietro di Bernardone my father, but rather Our Father who art in heaven." From that moment began the "sacrum commercium" of St. F. with Lady Poverty.
III. THE VOCATION AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE ORDER OF FRIARS MINOR
Having heard on 24 February 1209, the feast of St. Matthias, the Gospel of the mission of the Apostles, he felt in it almost a personal call and resolved upon the apostolic life. He began to preach. The first disciples joined him: Bernardo di Quintavalle, a noble and wealthy man of Assisi, Pietro Cattani, a learned jurist and canon, the aesthetic friar Giles (v.), Marico, Giovanni della Cappella, Sabatino, Filippo Longo, Giovanni di S. Costanzo, Barbaro, Bernardo di Vigilante, Angelo Tancredi. Once this small group had been gathered, he dictated "in few and simple words" (Testament of St. F.) a Rule that comprised the essential elements of the religious life. In 1210 he went to Rome to obtain from Innocent III the approval of his institution. The difficulties that arose for this project - given the times in which movements of an apostolic character in a heterodox sense were multiplying - were overcome through the protection of the bishop of Assisi and of Card. Giovanni di S. Paolo (v.); Innocent III granted his approval orally, giving the tonsure to St. Francis and to all his first companions and promising broader favors thereafter. Having returned to Assisi, they fixed their residence for some time at Rivotorto, then definitively at the Porziuncola, which would become the cradle of the Seraphic Order, the center of the whole Order, the place where F. would wish to die. There on 18 March 1212, Palm Sunday, St. Clare (v.) received the religious habit, thus giving origin to the Second Franciscan Order, the Poor Clares (v.).
IV. THE EARLY APOSTOLATE AND THE FIRST MISSIONS ABROAD
After the official approval and papal mission, a more systematic apostolate began, starting from Umbria and then extending into Tuscany, the Marches, Latium and the other regions of Italy, partly by going there in person, partly through his disciples, who by now were increasing in number. To the new method of this plain apostolate of those "new men" there corresponded among the people an extraordinary enthusiasm and renewal. People of every social station asked to belong to his Order, even people bound in marriage. From this arose the initiative of the Third Order, to which he gave a Rule probably in 1221.
Already from 1212 he was making his first attempts to leave Italy. In that year St. Francis embarked at Ancona for Syria, but a storm drove him onto the Dalmatian coast, whence, being unable to proceed further, he returned to Italy. Between 1213 and 1215 he went to Spain, whence an illness forced him to return. Some years later he sent other friars of his to Morocco, who in 1220 consecrated their evangelization with their blood, becoming the protomartyrs of the Order (v. BERNARDO, etc.). Around these years the Friars Minor were already spread through many regions of Europe and the Near East.
Once again in 1219 he himself took the road to the East, having reached the disorganized crusading army in Egypt, while it was besieging Damietta. After having tried in vain to bring concord among the Crusaders, he foretold to them the terrible defeat that followed on 29 Aug. He thought of converting the sultan (al-Malik al-Kāmil) and, having crossed the infidel camp with Brother Illuminato, he went "to the presence of the proud Sultan." If he did not obtain his conversion, he did however obtain permission to preach the Gospel freely in his domains.
Very soon, however, he had to return to Italy, also because of certain disturbances that had arisen in the Order, news of which he had received in the East.
V. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ORDER. THE RULES
The rapid multiplication of his family and the diffusion that was spreading everywhere soon imposed problems of organization that the primitive Rule, composed of a few evangelical phrases, was not enough to resolve. He therefore began periodically to call his friars together in congresses which, from at least 1217, became the General Chapters of the Order, in which the problems of the Institute were discussed and new provisions promulgated. They were always convoked at the little church of St. Mary of the Angels, the Portiuncula, which from 1216 had been enriched by Pope Honorius III with the famous indulgence. In the Chapter of 1217 St. F. divided the Order into provinces. In that of 1221, which was probably the famous Chapter of the Mats attended by 5000 friars, the primitive Rule was re-examined, expanded and modified with the promulgation of the so-called "First Rule," in reality the second. But, found somewhat imprecise and overlong, it was newly drafted, with the help of a learned jurist, Card. Ugolino (later Gregory IX), and the result was the definitive Rule which the Saint, again with the cardinal's support, had approved by Honorius III on 29 Nov. 1223.
VI. THE LAST YEARS. THE STIGMATA
St. F., too ideal and mystical a type, soon felt himself incapable of personally directing the vast movement to which he had given life, and already after the disturbances of 1220 (v. FRATI MINORI), he had renounced the office of superior or minister general of the Order, instituting at the Chapter of 1220 a vicar of his, Brother Pietro Cattani; upon whose death (1221), he elected Brother Elias to succeed him. From that moment, while always preserving in the Order his great personal authority, which came to him as founder, he withdrew ever more from direct administration, devoting himself more greatly to his mystical life, made up above all of mortification, renunciation, and sacrifice in the imitation of Christ. Thus he came, in 1224, to the ineffable prodigy of La Verna, the sacred mount that had been given to him in 1213 by Count Orlando of Chiusi, where «from Christ he received the last seal, which his members bore for two years»: the stigmata.
After the prodigy of La Verna F. lived two more years; but his body, already weakened by continual fasts and harsh penances, was tormented by incessant pains of the stomach and liver, to which was added a most troublesome disease of the eyes, which reduced him to almost complete blindness. In vain he sought comfort in the valley of Rieti, full of so many sweet memories, such as the dear solitude of Fonte Colombo, where he had composed the Rule of 1223, and the wood of Greccio, witness to the first representation of the crib on Christmas night of 1223. Nor did the gentle Siena avail him for anything else, nor the retreat of the Celle of Cortona, where he was struck by dropsy, so that, sensing the approach of «sister death», he had himself carried once more to his native city, to end his religious life where he had begun it. He desired to go directly to his beloved Porziuncola, but he had to yield to the pressure of his sons, who, the better to care for him, wished to conduct him to the bishop's palace.
VII. THE DEATH
Full of spiritual joy at the notice of his approaching death and eager to meet it at St. Mary of the Angels, he commanded his companions to carry him there, and there he prepared himself for a serene passing with all the affection of his great soul. The incomparable book of the Fioretti of St. Francis, the most precious jewel of the popular literature of the 14th century, has handed down the text of the blessing of the ailing Saint upon his beloved native city, which he was seeing again for the last time.
Before dying he wished to see his great Roman benefactress Giacomina dei Settesoli, whom he was wont to call "brother Jacopa," and to that end he had word written to her to come as soon as possible. But while a means was being sought to send the letter, that matron with her sons and other company arrived suddenly at the Porziuncola, and was thus able to be present at the Saint's passing. For his friars living and future he composed his testament, in which he summed up all his earlier exhortations on the Catholic faith and the observance of the Rule, especially regarding poverty, his mystical spouse: "he commended his dearest lady and commanded that they love her in faith" (Dante, Par., XI, 113). Finally, on October 3, wishing to die naked like Christ, he had himself stripped of his wretched garments and laid upon the bare earth; then he took leave of his sons, blessing all those present, beginning with the vicar of the Order, and those absent scattered among all nations. He then wished them to read him the Passion of Jesus Christ according to St. John, and finally with those present he began to recite the psalm "Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi," reaching the last verses: "Bring my soul out of prison... the just await me." Then his earthly tongue fell silent forever; that most holy soul, released from the flesh, was absorbed into the abyss of eternal light, and his body fell asleep in the Lord (I Celano, 110). At the moment of his passing, according to the testimony of St. Bonaventure (Leg. maior, 14), a flock of larks came to settle on the little roof at the Porziuncola, then rose in flight into the crimson twilight, storming the horizon with trills. After the piety of the friars and of the people who had rushed to venerate the body of the Saint bearing the stigmata had been satisfied, the following morning (October 4) the precious remains were carried in triumph into the city, the funeral procession halting before the little convent of St. Damian, so that Clare and her daughters might contemplate for the last time the face and the sacred wounds of the Father. Then the company moved slowly onward, and the sacred body was provisionally interred in the church of St. George.
VIII. THE CANONIZATION AND THE CULT
Not two years had passed since his death when, on July 15, 1228, Gregory IX, the great friend and protector of F., coming from Perugia (where the papal court was momentarily staying) to Assisi, in the church of St. George, canonized the Poverello of Umbria, personally delivering the eulogy of the Saint and fixing his feast on Oct. 4. The following day the Pontiff himself laid the first stone of the great basilica (St. F.) destined to receive the Saint's remains, entrusting its care to Brother Elias. The lower church was already ready in 1230, and on the occasion of the General Chapter, specially convoked at Assisi, the solemn translation of the Saint's body took place on May 25. Since in the course of time the memory of the precise location of the tomb of the seraphic saint had been lost, after vain attempts made in 1570, in 1607 and in 1806, at last in 1818 the place was found again and the recognition of the body was carried out. Without removing the urn, the crypt was enlarged and the tomb adorned with bronzes and marbles.
Particularly solemn were the last Franciscan centenary commemorations: that of his birth in 1881 and that of his death in 1926, for which occasion Pius XI issued the encyclical Rite expiatis (AAS, 18 [1926], p. 153 ff.). Benedict XV had already declared him in 1916 patron of Catholic Action, and Pius XII, on June 18,
1939, proclaimed him primary patron of Italy (AAS, 31 [1939], p. 256).
The liturgy celebrates two feasts in honor of St. F.: Oct. 4, the feast of the Saint, and Sept. 17, the feast of the Stigmata. In the Franciscan Order the translation of St. F. (May 25), the canonization (July 16) and the first approval of the Rule (Sept. 16) are also solemnized.
IX. ST. FRANCIS THROUGH THE CENTURIES
The appearance of St. Francis and the revelation that his spirit brought was considered from the very beginning a world event. For no other saint of the time is there such a copious number of contemporary biographies. Art expresses the same thought through the abundance and value of its figurations. Even today, especially since the beginning of this century, St. Francis is the object of a vast literary production, including in the ascetic field. There were nevertheless times when Francis was not understood: this was especially the case for the Protestants of the 16th century, who took occasion from the famous book of Bartolomeo Riminico da Pisa, De conformitatibus vitae b. Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu, which by Erasmus Alberus
FRANCIS OF ASSISI, saint. - Death of St. Francis. Fresco by Giotto (1317). Florence, Bardi Chapel in S. Croce.
was defined as «Alcoranum Franciscanorum seu blasphemiarum et nugarum Lerna de stigmatizato Idelo quod Franciscum nominant» (Frankfurt 1342), a book that had wide diffusion in various editions and versions. He was likewise despised by the encyclopedists and rationalists of the 18th century; Goethe, in his journey through Italy, relates that he did not wish to see the basilica of St. Francis. In the Romantic reaction of the 19th century, St. Francis, through the work especially of G. Görres, was reappraised also from a new angle, above all as a poet and troubadour.
From then on the Franciscan literature kept multiplying more and more; and it found a passionate and able cultivator especially in Paul Sabatier, who may be said to have given a new scientific direction to studies on the life and soul of the Poor Man of Assisi.
X. THE FIGURE OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
F. is one of those gigantic figures of history who appear rarely, destined by God to bring about a wondrous spiritual upheaval in society. After seven centuries he is still alive in the soul of peoples; indeed, every day his profile grows ever greater, thanks to his fruitful apostolate of gentleness, simplicity and evangelical poverty, founded on the basis of love and universal brotherhood. He passed over the earth as an "alter Christus," reproducing in himself the divine figure of the Savior as was granted to no other saint, rising moreover to the status of prototype of the Italian race for his gentle, intelligent, simple, poetic character, to the point of making a certain modern author write, with perhaps debatable accuracy: "F. is the most saintly of Italians and the most Italian of saints."
BIBL. 1. Sources: a) Writings of St. Francis. Those certainly authentic are reduced to the following: two Rules of the Friars Minor (a long one of 1221 and the definitive one of 1222); the testament; some fragments inserted in the Rule of the Cimena, 28 admonitions, the Salutatio virtutum, the opuscule De religiosa habitatione in eremo, 6 epistles, and the prayers: Laudes Dei, Laudes domini, Salutatio B. Virginis, the office of the Passion and the Canticle of Brother Sun. The first edition, repeated many times but
overloaded with spurious texts, was edited by L. Wadding and published at Antwerp in 1623. Two critical editions appeared in 1904: [L. Lemmens], Opuscula s. p. Francisci Assisiensis, Quaracchi 1904 and H. Böhmer, Analekten zur Geschichte d. hl. Franz von Assisi. A good Italian version: V. Facchinetti, Gli scritti di s. F. d'A., Milan 1921 (3rd ed., ibid. 1944). b) Historical testimonies. The principal and most authoritative of the very numerous legends contemporary with or slightly later than St. F. are the Vita I (written in 1228) and II (written in 1246) of Thomas of Celano, with the Tractatus de miraculis (1259 ff.) by the same, and the Legenda maior and minor of St. Bonaventure. This, with many other texts dependent on them and liturgical texts, are published in vol. X of Analecta Franciscana, Quaracchi 1926-47. A good and recent Italian version of the Celanese legends is that of F. Casolini, Quaracchi 1926; while for that of St. Bonaventure cf. the version of G. Battelli, S. Casciano val di Pisa 1926. Other legends, important above all for knowing the spirit of St. F., are the Speculum perfectionis and the Legenda trium sociorum, regarding which some reservation must be made about their historical value and about which very lively questions have been agitated, forming the so-called Franciscan Question (v.). c) Bibl. on the sources, W. Goetz, Die Quellen zur Geschichte des hl. Franz von Assisi, Gotha 1904; M. de Barcellone, Estudio crítico de las fuentes históricas de s. Francisco y Santa Clara, Barcelona 1921; A. Masseron, Les sources de la vie de st François d'Assise, in St François d'Assise, Paris 1927, pp. 6-67; M. Bihl, Disquisitiones Celanenses, in Archivum Franc. histor., 20 (1947), pp. 433-66; 21 (1928), pp. 3-54, 161-205; L. Cellucci, Le leggende francescane del sec. XIII nel loro aspetto artistico, Rome 1929; Vredegando d'Anversa, De familiis litterariis ad vitam s. Francisci Assisiensis pertinentibus, in Collectanea Franciscana, 1 (1931), pp. 433-50.
8. Studies. a) General bibl. The literature on St. F. is enormous and has had an exceptional development especially since the beginning of this century: therefore some bibliographical works on the subject are indicated: C. Pitolea, Bibliographie franciscaine de 1920 à 1926, in Revue d'histoire franciscaine, 3 (1926), pp. 579-91; I. Pou y Marti, Studia recentiora circa vitam s. Francisci, in Antonianum, 2 (1927), pp. 3-20; V. Facchinetti, S. F. d'A. (Guida bibliografica), Rome 1928; E. Palandri, Rassegna bibliografica di studi francescani dell'ultimo trentennio, in Studi francescani, 3rd series, 12 (1940), pp. 161-231. The current Franciscan bibliographical production is systematically reviewed, in a special section, by the journal Collectanea Franciscana, Rome 1931 ff. b) Biographical studies. Among the most recent: P. Sabatier, Vie de st François d'Assise, Paris 1894; definitive ed., ibid. 1931 (posthumous), edited by S. Goffin (on the Index); id., Etudes inédites, ibid. 1932; G. Schnitzer, F. d'A. (It. trans. by A. Mercati), Florence 1907; Fr. Cuthbert, Life of st. Francis, London 1921; M. Beaufreton, St François d'Assise, Paris 1925; A. Fortini, Nova vita di s. F. d'A., Milan 1926; V. Facchinetti, S. F. d'A., Milan 1926; F. Calamita, S. F. d'A., note di antropologia, Assisi 1927; L. de Sarasola, S. Francisco de Asis, Madrid 1920; H. Thode, Franz v. Assisi, Vienna 1934; G. Jørgensen, S. F. d'A., Rome 1946; S. Attal, S. F. d'A., Padua 1947; M. Sticco, S. F. d'A., Milan 1949; G. K. Chesterton, S. F., It. trans., Milan 1950. c) On the spirit of St. F. cf. G. Salvadori, Ricordi di s. F. d'A., Florence 1926; J. Felder, L'Ideale di s. F. d'A., It. trans., 3rd ed., ibid. 1944; A. Gemelli, Il francescanesimo, 6th ed., Milan
(by courtesy of Msgr. J. P. France)
FRANCESCO D'ASSISI, saint. - St. F. kneeling embracing the tree of the Cross. Silography from the Liber conformitatum, Mediolani per Gotardum Ponticum 1510.
1947; E. d'Ascoli, L'Anima di s. F., Ascoli Piceno 1949; J. Felder, S. F. Cavaliere di Cristo, Milan 1950.
Riccardo Pratesi-Alberto Ghinato
XI. ICONOGRAPHY
The description of the Saint's person, handed down by Thomas of Celano, is too generic for its precise influence to be recognizable in the formation of Franciscan iconography.
The oldest portrait of St. F. remains the fresco in the Sacro Speco at Subiaco, executed ca.
1228, by a painter of the Roman school, before the Saint, indicated simply as «frater Franciscus», was canonized. The Byzantine features are softened by a portrait-like tendency and a sense of humanity that would be lost in the subsequent paintings of the 13th century. The Saint holds an inserted scroll: «Pax huic domui», a wish for the visit he made to the monasteries of Subiaco. In the panel by Bonaventura Berlinghieri (1235) in the church of St. F. at Pescia, the figure of the Saint takes on an aspect of motionless, hieratic Byzantine frontality: he clasps a sacred book, has the stigmata and raises his right hand in a gesture of greeting. A naive narrative sense is noticeable in the little stories at the sides of the figure, which represent: St. F. receiving the stigmata, The Sermon to the Birds, The miracle of a little girl healed at the Saint's tomb, The healing of the possessed, of The cripple in the bath and of The possessed. For the St. F. receiving the stigmata, a panel of the school of the Berlinghieri, in the Accademia of Florence, should be remembered, where, for the first time, the figure of Christ, with wings from which rays spring, appears crucified. The iconography of the Pescia panel is repeated in another of the Pisan school, executed ca. 1260 (Pisa, church of St. F.), but the stories at the sides are in part different, and the scene of the healing of a woman sick with the eyes, and of one wounded in the chest, derive certainly from the Treatise on the miracles of Thomas of Celano. The series of stories around the figure of the Saint is enriched in the panel of the church of S. Croce in Florence (Florentine school, ca. 1270), where it seems that the Franciscan scenes are for the first time inspired by the account of St. Bonaventure. Isolated figures on panels of St. F. are those, very Byzantinizing, of Margaritone d'Arezzo (recorded in 1262) at Arezzo (Pinacoteca) and Rome (Vatican Pinacoteca). But in the convent of S. Francesco a Ripa the Saint (panel attributed to Margaritone) clasps with his left hand a Cross, and with his right an open book where one reads: «qui vult venire post me abnegat semet ipsum tollatque suam...». Interesting, then, is the panel of an Umbrian follower of Giunta (Assisi, S. Maria degli Angeli: a painter who goes under the name of «master of St. Francis»). The portrait is executed on a panel that served as the Saint's bed, as the inscription on the open book recalls: «Hiz mihi viventi lectus fuit et morienti», while his left hand clasps the Cross.
The figure of St. F. becomes more human in the fresco of Cimabue (Assisi, Lower Basilica); and even more so in the frescoes of Giotto (Upper Basilica; and Florence, S. Croce) clearly derived from the account of St. Bonaventure, with the presentation of the Saint as a thaumaturge, an image always vigilant, moved, suffering. After Giotto, Franciscan iconography, by then fully formed, undergoes no notable variations.
The image of the Saint appears isolated or in complex compositions in Italian and European art, always recognizable by now-established iconographic features: from the St. F. of Donatello (Padua, S. Antonio), to the one that appears in Raphael's Madonna of Foligno, to those painted by Barocci, the differences are more than anything in the action, not in the physical person of the Saint. Among the Stories of St. F. after Giotto, the fresco cycle of B. Gozzoli at Montefalco (1452) is remembered. In Baroque art the figure of St. F. finally takes on aspects of a more accentuated pathos, as in the St. F. of the Pinacoteca of Cremona, a copy from Caravaggio, in the St. F. embracing Jesus by Murillo (Seville, Museum), in the St. Francis supported by an angel, by Orazio Gentileschi, etc. - See plates CII-CIII.
Bibliography7 works
Luigi Grassi