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Saint
Francis of Assisi
Francis
of Assisi, St (1182-1226), Italian mystic
and preacher, who founded the Franciscans.
Born in Assisi, and originally named
Giovanni Francesco Bernardone, he appears
to have received little formal education,
though his father was a wealthy merchant.
As a young man, Francis led a worldly,
carefree life. Following a battle between
Assisi and Perugia, he was held captive in
Perugia for over a year. While imprisoned,
he suffered a severe illness during which
he resolved to alter his way of life. Back
in Assisi in 1205, he performed charities
among the lepers and began working on the
restoration of dilapidated churches,
reportedly in response to a vision in
which the crucifix of the ruined chapel of
San Damiano at Assisi ordered him to
repair its house. Francis's change of
character and his expenditures for charity
angered his father, who legally
disinherited him. Francis then discarded
his rich garments for a bishop's cloak and
devoted the next three years to the care
of outcasts and lepers in the woods of
Mount Subasio.
For
his devotions on Mount Subasio, Francis
restored the ruined chapel of Santa Maria
degli Angeli. In 1208, one day during
Mass, he heard a call telling him to go
out into the world and, according to the
text of Matthew 10:5-14, to possess
nothing, but to do good
everywhere.
Upon
returning to Assisi that same year,
Francis began preaching. He gathered round
him the 12 disciples who became the
original brothers of his order, later
called the First Order; they elected
Francis superior. In 1212 he received a
young, well-born nun of Assisi, Clare,
into Franciscan fellowship; through her
was established the Order of the Poor
Ladies (the Poor Clares), later the Second
Order of Franciscans. It was probably
later in 1212 that Francis set out for the
Holy Land, but a shipwreck forced him to
return. Other difficulties prevented him
from accomplishing much missionary work
when he went to Spain to preach to the
Moors. In 1219 he was in Egypt, where he
succeeded in preaching to, but not in
converting, the sultan. Francis then went
on to the Holy Land, staying there until
1220. He wished to be martyred and
rejoiced upon hearing that five Franciscan
friars had been killed in Morocco while
carrying out their duties. On his return
home he found dissension in the ranks of
the friars and resigned as superior,
spending the next few years in planning
what became the Third Order of
Franciscans, the tertiaries.
In
September 1224, after 40 days of fasting,
Francis was praying upon Monte Alverno
when he felt pain mingled with joy, and
the marks of the crucifixion of Christ,
the stigmata, appeared on his body.
Accounts of the appearance of these marks
differ, but it seems probable that they
were knobby protuberances of the flesh,
resembling the heads of nails. Francis was
carried back to Assisi, where his
remaining years were marked by physical
pain and almost total blindness. His
sufferings evidently did nothing to
diminish his love of God and Creation, as
exhibited in his "Canticle of the
Creators", supposed to have been composed
at Assisi in 1225, in which the Sun and
the rest of nature are praised as brothers
and sisters, and the oft-depicted incident
in which he preached to the sparrows. He
was canonized in 1228. In 1980, Pope John
Paul II proclaimed him the patron saint of
ecologists. In art, the emblems of St
Francis are the wolf, the lamb, the fish,
birds, and the stigmata. His feast day is
October 4.
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