As a matter of fact he threw Francis out. But when he had a dream that this tiny man in rags held up the tilting Lateran basilica, he quickly called Francis back and gave him permission to preach. Sometimes this direct approach led to mistakes that he corrected with the same spontaneity that he made them. Once he ordered a brother who hesitated to speak because he stuttered to go preach half-naked.
When Francis realized how he had hurt someone he loved he ran to town, stopped the brother, took off his own clothes, and preached instead. Francis acted quickly because he acted from the heart; he didn't have time to put on a role. Once he was so sick and exhausted, his companions borrowed a mule for him to ride.
When the man who owned the mule recognized Francis he said, "Try to be as virtuous as everyone thinks you are because many have a lot of confidence in you. Another example of his directness came when he decided to go to Syria to convert the Moslems while the Fifth Crusade was being fought.
In the middle of a battle, Francis decided to do the simplest thing and go straight to the sultan to make peace. When he and his companion were captured, the real miracle was that they weren't killed. Instead Francis was taken to the sultan who was charmed by Francis and his preaching. He told Francis, "I would convert to your religion which is a beautiful one -- but both of us would be murdered. Francis did find persecution and martyrdom of a kind -- not among the Moslems, but among his own brothers.
When he returned to Italy, he came back to a brotherhood that had grown to in ten years. Pressure came from outside to control this great movement, to make them conform to the standards of others.
His dream of radical poverty was too harsh, people said. Francis responded, "Lord, didn't I tell you they wouldn't trust you? He finally gave up authority in his order -- but he probably wasn't too upset about it. Now he was just another brother, like he'd always wanted.
Francis' final years were filled with suffering as well as humiliation. Praying to share in Christ's passion he had a vision received the stigmata, the marks of the nails and the lance wound that Christ suffered, in his own body.
Years of poverty and wandering had made Francis ill. When he began to go blind, the pope ordered that his eyes be operated on. This meant cauterizing his face with a hot iron. Be courteous to me now in this hour, for I have always loved you, and temper your heat so that I can endure it. How did Francis respond to blindness and suffering?
That was when he wrote his beautiful Canticle of the Sun that expresses his brotherhood with creation in praising God. Francis never recovered from this illness. He died on October 4, at the age of Francis is considered the founder of all Franciscan orders and the patron saint of ecologists and merchants. Copyright Catholic Online.
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Constitution of the USA. Continue reading about St. Francis Xavier Bianchi St. Francis of Assisi Fun Facts. More Saints Search Search Saints. Trending Saints: St. Josaphat of Polotsk St. Frances Xavier Cabrini St. Joseph St. Never Miss any Updates! Stay up to date with the latest news, information, and special offers. Email Address. It has been said with pardonable warmth that Francis entered into glory in his lifetime, and that he is the one saint whom all succeeding generations have agreed in canonizing.
Certain it is that those also who care little about the order he founded, and who have but scant sympathy with the Church to which he ever gave his devout allegiance, even those who know that Christianity to be Divine, find themselves, instinctively as it were, looking across the ages for guidance to the wonderful Umbrian Poverello, and invoking his name in grateful remembrance.
This unique position Francis doubtless owes in no small measure to his singularly lovable and winsome personality. Few saints ever exhaled "the good odour of Christ " to such a degree as he. There was about Francis, moreover, a chivalry and a poetry which gave to his other-worldliness a quite romantic charm and beauty.
Other saints have seemed entirely dead to the world around them, but Francis was ever thoroughly in touch with the spirit of the age. He delighted in the songs of Provence, rejoiced in the new-born freedom of his native city, and cherished what Dante calls the pleasant sound of his dear land. And this exquisite human element in Francis's character was the key to that far-reaching, all-embracing sympathy, which may be almost called his characteristic gift.
In his heart, as an old chronicler puts it, the whole world found refuge, the poor , the sick and the fallen being the objects of his solicitude in a more special manner. Heedless as Francis ever was of the world's judgments in his own regard, it was always his constant care to respect the opinions of all and to wound the feelings of none. Wherefore he admonishes the friars to use only low and mean tables, so that "if a beggar were to come to sit down near them he might believe that he was but with his equals and need not blush on account of his poverty.
Whereupon Francis had a table laid out and sat down beside the famished friar , and lest the latter might be ashamed to eat alone, ordered all the other brethren to join in the repast. Francis's devotedness in consoling the afflicted made him so condescending that he shrank not from abiding with the lepers in their loathly lazar-houses and from eating with them out of the same platter.
But above all it is his dealings with the erring that reveal the truly Christian spirit of his charity. Writing to a certain minister in the order, Francis says: "Should there be a brother anywhere in the world who has sinned , no matter how great soever his fault may be, let him not go away after he has once seen thy face without showing pity towards him; and if he seek not mercy, ask him if he does not desire it.
And by this I will know if you love God and me. But according to Francis, not only was justice due even to evil-doers, but justice must be preceded by courtesy as by a herald. Courtesy, indeed, in the saint's quaint concept, was the younger sister of charity and one of the qualities of God Himself, Who "of His courtesy", he declares, "gives His sun and His rain to the just and the unjust ". This habit of courtesy Francis ever sought to enjoin on his disciples.
The very animals found in Francis a tender friend and protector; thus we find him pleading with the people of Gubbio to feed the fierce wolf that had ravished their flocks, because through hunger "Brother Wolf" had done this wrong. And the early legends have left us many an idyllic picture of how beasts and birds alike susceptible to the charm of Francis's gentle ways, entered into loving companionship with him; how the hunted leveret sought to attract his notice; how the half-frozen bees crawled towards him in the winter to be fed; how the wild falcon fluttered around him; how the nightingale sang with him in sweetest content in the ilex grove at the Carceri, and how his "little brethren the birds " listened so devoutly to his sermon by the roadside near Bevagna that Francis chided himself for not having thought of preaching to them before.
Francis's love of nature also stands out in bold relief in the world he moved in. He delighted to commune with the wild flowers, the crystal spring, and the friendly fire, and to greet the sun as it rose upon the fair Umbrian vale. In this respect, indeed, St. Francis's "gift of sympathy" seems to have been wider even than St. Paul's , for we find no evidence in the great Apostle of a love for nature or for animals. Hardly less engaging than his boundless sense of fellow-feeling was Francis's downright sincerity and artless simplicity.
For it was his singular study never to hide from men that which known to God. Another winning trait of Francis which inspires the deepest affection was his unswerving directness of purpose and unfaltering following after an ideal.
The love of Christ and Him Crucified permeated the whole life and character of Francis, and he placed the chief hope of redemption and redress for a suffering humanity in the literal imitation of his Divine Master.
The saint imitated the example of Christ as literally as it was in him to do so; barefoot, and in absolute poverty , he proclaimed the reign of love. This heroic imitation of Christ's poverty was perhaps the distinctive mark of Francis's vocation , and he was undoubtedly, as Bossuet expresses it, the most ardent, enthusiastic, and desperate lover of poverty the world has yet seen.
After money Francis most detested discord and divisions. Peace, therefore, became his watchword, and the pathetic reconciliation he effected in his last days between the Bishop and Potesta of Assisi is bit one instance out of many of his power to quell the storms of passion and restore tranquility to hearts torn asunder by civil strife. The duty of a servant of God , Francis declared, was to lift up the hearts of men and move them to spiritual gladness.
Hence it was not "from monastic stalls or with the careful irresponsibility of the enclosed student" that the saint and his followers addressed the people; "they dwelt among them and grappled with the evils of the system under which the people groaned". They worked in return for their fare, doing for the lowest the most menial labour, and speaking to the poorest words of hope such as the world had not heard for many a day.
In this wise Francis bridged the chasm between an aristocratic clergy and the common people, and though he taught no new doctrine , he so far repopularized the old one given on the Mount that the Gospel took on a new life and called forth a new love. Such in briefest outline are some of the salient features which render the figure of Francis one of such supreme attraction that all manner of men feel themselves drawn towards him, with a sense of personal attachment.
Few, however, of those who feel the charm of Francis's personality may follow the saint to his lonely height of rapt communion with God. For, however engaging a "minstrel of the Lord", Francis was none the less a profound mystic in the truest sense of the word. The whole world was to him one luminous ladder, mounting upon the rungs of which he approached and beheld God. It is very misleading, however, to portray Francis as living "at a height where dogma ceases to exist", and still further from the truth to represent the trend of his teaching as one in which orthodoxy is made subservient to "humanitarianism".
A very cursory inquiry into Francis's religious belief suffices to show that it embraced the entire Catholic dogma , nothing more or less. If then the saint's sermons were on the whole moral rather than doctrinal , it was less because he preached to meet the wants of his day, and those whom he addressed had not strayed from dogmatic truth ; they were still "hearers", if not "doers", of the Word.
For this reason Francis set aside all questions more theoretical than practical, and returned to the Gospel. Few lives have been more wholly imbued with the supernatural , as even Renan admits. Nowhere, perhaps, can there be found a keener insight into the innermost world of spirit , yet so closely were the supernatural and the natural blended in Francis, that his very asceticism was often clothed in the guide of romance, as witness his wooing the Lady Poverty , in a sense that almost ceased to be figurative.
For Francis's singularly vivid imagination was impregnate with the imagery of the chanson de geste , and owing to his markedly dramatic tendency, he delighted in suiting his action to his thought. So, too, the saint's native turn for the picturesque led him to unite religion and nature. He found in all created things, however trivial, some reflection of the Divine perfection, and he loved to admire in them the beauty, power, wisdom, and goodness of their Creator.
And so it came to pass that he saw sermons even in stones, and good in everything. Moreover, Francis's simple, childlike nature fastened on the thought, that if all are from one Father then all are real kin. Hence his custom of claiming brotherhood with all manner of animate and inanimate objects. The personification, therefore, of the elements in the "Canticle of the Sun" is something more than a mere literary figure. Francis's love of creatures was not simply the offspring of a soft or sentimental disposition; it arose rather from that deep and abiding sense of the presence of God , which underlay all he said and did.
Even so, Francis's habitual cheerfulness was not that of a careless nature , or of one untouched by sorrow. None witnessed Francis's hidden struggles, his long agonies of tears, or his secret wrestlings in prayer.
And if we meet him making dumb-show of music, by playing a couple of sticks like a violin to give vent to his glee , we also find him heart-sore with foreboding at the dire dissensions in the order which threatened to make shipwreck of his ideal.
Nor were temptations or other weakening maladies of the soul wanting to the saint at any time. Francis's lightsomeness had its source in that entire surrender of everything present and passing, in which he had found the interior liberty of the children of God ; it drew its strength from his intimate union with Jesus in the Holy Communion.
The mystery of the Holy Eucharist , being an extension of the Passion , held a preponderant place in the life of Francis, and he had nothing more at heart than all that concerned the cultus of the Blessed Sacrament. Hence we not only hear of Francis conjuring the clergy to show befitting respect for everything connected with the Sacrifice of the Mass , but we also see him sweeping out poor churches , questing sacred vessels for them, and providing them with altar-breads made by himself.
So great, indeed, was Francis's reverence for the priesthood , because of its relation to the Adorable Sacrament , that in his humility he never dared to aspire to that dignity. Humility was, no doubt, the saint's ruling virtue. The idol of an enthusiastic popular devotion , he ever truly believed himself less than the least.
Equally admirable was Francis's prompt and docile obedience to the voice of grace within him, even in the early days of his ill-defined ambition , when the spirit of interpretation failed him. Later on, the saint , with as clear as a sense of his message as any prophet ever had, yielded ungrudging submission to what constituted ecclesiastical authority.
No reformer, moreover, was ever, less aggressive than Francis. His apostolate embodied the very noblest spirit of reform; he strove to correct abuses by holding up an ideal. He stretched out his arms in yearning towards those who longed for the "better gifts". The others he left alone.
And thus, without strife or schism , God's Poor Little Man of Assisi became the means of renewing the youth of the Church and of imitating the most potent and popular religious movement since the beginnings of Christianity. No doubt this movement had its social as well as its religious side. That the Third Order of St. Francis went far towards re-Christianizing medieval society is a matter of history. However, Francis's foremost aim was a religious one. But because St.
Francis sought first the Kingdom of God and His justice , many other things were added unto him. And his own exquisite Franciscan spirit , as it is called, passing out into the wide world, became an abiding source of inspiration. Perhaps it savours of exaggeration to say, as has been said, that "all the threads of civilization in the subsequent centuries seem to hark back to Francis", and that since his day "the character of the whole Roman Catholic Church is visibly Umbrian".
It would be difficult, none the less, to overestimate the effect produced by Francis upon the mind of his time , or the quickening power he wielded on the generations which have succeeded him. To mention two aspects only of his all-pervading influence, Francis must surely be reckoned among those to whom the world of art and letters is deeply indebted. Prose , as Arnold observes, could not satisfy the saint's ardent soul , so he made poetry.
He was, indeed, too little versed in the laws of composition to advance far in that direction. But his was the first cry of a nascent poetry which found its highest expression in the "Divine Comedy"; wherefore Francis has been styled the precursor of Dante. What the saint did was to teach a people "accustomed to the artificial versification of courtly Latin and Provencal poets, the use of their native tongue in simple spontaneous hymns , which became even more popular with the Laudi and Cantici of his poet-follower Jacopone of Todi ".
In so far, moreover, as Francis's repraesentatio , as Salimbene calls it, of the stable at Bethlehem is the first mystery-play we hear of in Italy , he is said to have borne a part in the revival of the drama.
However this may be, if Francis's love of song called forth the beginnings of Italian verse, his life no less brought about the birth of Italian art. His story, says Ruskin, became a passionate tradition painted everywhere with delight. Full of colour, dramatic possibilities, and human interest, the early Franciscan legend afforded the most popular material for painters since the life of Christ. No sooner, indeed did Francis's figure make an appearance in art than it became at once a favourite subject, especially with the mystical Umbrian School.
So true is this that it has been said we might by following his familiar figure "construct a history of Christian art , from the predecessors of Cimabue down to Guido Reni , Rubens , and Van Dyck ". Probably the oldest likeness of Francis that has come down to us is that preserved in the Sacro Speco at Subiaco. It is said that it was painted by a Benedictine monk during the saint's visit there, which may have been in The absence of the stigmata , halo, and title of saint in this fresco form its chief claim to be considered a contemporary picture; it is not, however, a real portrait in the modern sense of the word, and we are dependent for the traditional presentment of Francis rather on artists' ideals, like the Della Robbia statue at the Porziuncola , which is surely the saint's vera effigies , as no Byzantine so-called portrait can ever be, and the graphic description of Francis given by Celano Vita Prima, c.
Of less than middle height, we are told, and frail in form, Francis had a long yet cheerful face and soft but strong voice, small brilliant black eyes, dark brown hair, and a sparse beard. His person was in no way imposing, yet there was about the saint a delicacy, grace , and distinction which made him most attractive. The literary materials for the history of St. Francis are more than usually copious and authentic. There are indeed few if any medieval lives more thoroughly documented.
We have in the first place the saint's own writings. These are not voluminous and were never written with a view to setting forth his ideas systematically, yet they bear the stamp of his personality and are marked by the same unvarying features of his preaching. A few leading thoughts taken "from the words of the Lord " seemed to him all sufficing, and these he repeats again and again, adapting them to the needs of the different persons whom he addresses. Short, simple, and informal, Francis's writings breathe the unstudied love of the Gospel and enforce the same practical morality , while they abound in allegories and personification and reveal an intimate interweaving of Biblical phraseology.
Not all the saint's writings have come down to us, and not a few of these formerly attributed to him are now with greater likelihood ascribed to others. The extant and authentic opuscula of Francis comprise, besides the rule of the Friars Minor and some fragments of the other Seraphic legislation, several letters, including one addressed "to all the Christians who dwell in the whole world," a series of spiritual counsels addressed to his disciples , the "Laudes Creaturarum" or "Canticle of the Sun", and some lesser praises, an Office of the Passion compiled for his own use, and few other orisons which show us Francis even as Celano saw him, "not so much a man's praying as prayer itself".
In addition to the saint's writings the sources of the history of Francis include a number of early papal bulls and some other diplomatic documents, as they are called, bearing upon his life and work. Then come the biographies properly so called. These include the lives written by Thomas of Celano , one of Francis's followers; a joint narrative of his life compiled by Leo , Rufinus, and Angelus, intimate companions of the saint , in ; and the celebrated legend of St.
Bonaventure , which appeared about ; besides a somewhat more polemic legend called the "Speculum Perfectionis", attributed to Brother Leo , the state of which is a matter of controversy. There are also several important thirteenth-century chronicles of the order, like those of Jordan , Eccleston , and Bernard of Besse , and not a few later works, such as the "Chronica XXIV. Generalium" and the "Liber de Conformitate", which are in some sort a continuation of them.
It is upon these works that all the later biographies of Francis's life are based. Recent years have witnessed a truly remarkable upgrowth of interest in the life and work of St. Francis, more especially among non-Catholics, and Assisi has become in consequence the goal of a new race of pilgrims.
This interest, for the most part literary and academic, is centered mainly in the study of the primitive documents relating to the saint's history and the beginnings of the Franciscan Order. Although inaugurated some years earlier, this movement received its greatest impulse from the publication in of Paul Sabatier's "Vie de S. In spite of the author's entire lack of sympathy with the saint's religious standpoint, his biography of Francis bespeaks vast erudition, deep research, and rare critical insight, and it has opened up a new era in the study of Franciscan resources.
Unskilled and with no combat experience, Francis was quickly captured by enemy soldiers. Dressed like an aristocrat and wearing expensive new armor, he was considered worthy of a decent ransom, and the soldiers decided to spare his life. He and the other wealthy troops were taken as prisoners, led off to a dank underground cell. Francis would spend nearly a year in such miserable conditions — awaiting his father's payment — during which time he may well have contracted a serious disease.
Also during this time, he would later report, he began to receive visions from God. After a year of negotiations, Francis' ransom was accepted, and he was released from prison in When he came back to Assisi, however, Francis was a very different man. Upon his return, he was dangerously sick in both mind and body — a battle-fatigued casualty of war. One day, as legend has it, while riding on a horse in the local countryside, Francis encountered a leper.
Prior to the war, Francis would have run from the leper, but on this occasion, his behavior was very different. Viewing the leper as a symbol of moral conscience — or as Jesus incognito, according to some religious scholars — he embraced and kissed him, later describing the experience as a feeling of sweetness in his mouth.
After this incident, Francis felt an indescribable freedom. His earlier lifestyle had lost all of its appeal. Subsequently, Francis, now in his early 20s, began turning his focus toward God.
Instead of working, he spent an ever-increasing amount of time at a remote mountain hideaway as well as in old, quiet churches around Assisi, praying, looking for answers, and helping nurse lepers. During this time, while praying before an old Byzantine crucifix at the church of San Damiano, Francis reportedly heard the voice of Christ, who told him to rebuild the Christian Church and to live a life of extreme poverty.
Francis obeyed and devoted himself to Christianity. He began preaching around Assisi and was soon joined by 12 loyal followers. Some regarded Francis as a madman or a fool, but others viewed him as one of the greatest examples of how to live the Christian ideal since Jesus Christ himself. After his epiphany at the church of San Damiano, Francis experienced another defining moment in his life.
In order to raise money to rebuild the Christian church, he sold a bolt of cloth from his father's shop, along with his horse. His father became furious upon learning of his son's actions and subsequently dragged Francis before the local bishop. The bishop told Francis to return his father's money, to which his reaction was extraordinary: He stripped off his clothes, and along with them, returned the money back to his father, declaring that God was now the only father he recognized.
This event is credited as Francis' final conversion, and there is no indication that Francis and his father ever spoke again thereafter. The bishop gave Francis a rough tunic, and dressed in these new humble clothes, Francis left Assisi. Unluckily for him, the first people he met on the road were a group of dangerous thieves, who beat him badly.
Despite his wounds, Francis was elated. From now on, he would live according to the Gospel.
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