Francis of Assisi
1181 – 1226
Founder of the Franciscan Order who embraced radical poverty and simplicity. His love for creation, care for the poor, and mystical devotion made him one of the most beloved saints in Christian history.
From Wealth to Poverty
Born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone to a wealthy cloth merchant, Francis enjoyed a carefree youth of parties and chivalric ambition. After a year as a prisoner of war and a serious illness, he began to experience visions. In a famous scene before the bishop of Assisi, he stripped off his fine clothes and renounced his inheritance, declaring God alone as his father. He embraced radical poverty, rebuilding ruined churches with his own hands and caring for lepers. The conversion of Francis was not a gradual process but a series of dramatic ruptures. He kissed a leper on the road — an act that terrified and repulsed him, but which he later described as the moment when “what had seemed bitter was turned into sweetness of soul and body.” He heard the crucifix at San Damiano speak to him: “Francis, go and repair my Church, which is falling into ruin.” He initially took this literally, gathering stones to rebuild the chapel, but soon understood it as a call to renew the entire Church. Francis’s embrace of poverty was not mere asceticism; it was a form of identification with Christ. He called poverty “Lady Poverty” and courted her as a knight courts his beloved. In a world where the Catholic Church was wealthy, powerful, and increasingly bureaucratic, Francis’s radical simplicity was both a rebuke and an invitation. His example would inspire not only the Franciscan movement but also, centuries later, the reflections of Soren Kierkegaard on authentic Christianity and Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the cost of discipleship.
The Franciscan Movement
Francis’s joyful poverty attracted followers, and in 1209 he received papal approval for a simple rule of life based on the words of Jesus: “Take nothing for the journey.” The Franciscan Order grew rapidly, becoming one of the largest religious orders in the Church. Francis also founded the Poor Clares (for women, with St. Clare) and the Third Order (for laypeople). His approach — preaching in the vernacular, serving the poor, living among the people rather than in monasteries — transformed medieval Christianity. The Franciscan movement was, in many ways, the most successful reform in the history of the Catholic Church before the Reformation. Within a generation of Francis’s death, there were Franciscan friars in every corner of Europe and beyond. They served as missionaries, scholars, and chaplains to the poor. The intellectual wing of the order produced some of the greatest minds of the medieval period, including Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, who developed a distinctly Franciscan theology emphasizing God’s love and freedom over the Aristotelian rationalism of Thomas Aquinas. Yet the movement’s very success created tensions that Francis himself foresaw. As the order grew, the question of how literally to follow Francis’s example of absolute poverty became bitterly divisive. The “Spiritual” Franciscans insisted on radical poverty; the “Conventual” wing argued for a more practical approach. This conflict, which continued for centuries, illustrates a perennial problem in Christian history: how to institutionalize a prophetic vision without domesticating it.
Creation, Stigmata & Death
Francis’s love for creation was legendary — he preached to birds, negotiated peace with a wolf terrorizing the town of Gubbio, and composed the Canticle of the Sun, one of the first great poems in the Italian language. In 1224, while praying on Mount La Verna, he received the stigmata — the wounds of Christ’s crucifixion on his own body — the first recorded instance of this phenomenon. Nearly blind and in constant pain, he died on October 3, 1226, lying naked on the ground to imitate Christ’s poverty to the end. He was canonized just two years later. The Canticle of the Sun is a remarkable document — a hymn of praise addressed to “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon,” to “Brother Wind” and “Sister Water.” It reflects a vision of creation as a family united under a common Father, a vision that finds echoes in the theology of Hildegard of Bingen and, centuries later, in the ecological concerns of the modern era. Pope Francis, who took his name from the saint of Assisi, has drawn explicitly on this tradition in his encyclical on the environment. The stigmata remain one of the most mysterious episodes in Christian history. For Francis’s followers, they were the ultimate confirmation of his identification with Christ. For skeptics, they require naturalistic explanation. But whatever one makes of the phenomenon, the stigmata symbolize something central to Francis’s spirituality: the conviction that following Christ means sharing in his suffering, not merely admiring it from a distance. This theme would resurface powerfully in the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the witness of Mother Teresa.
Legacy & Influence
Francis of Assisi is arguably the most beloved saint in Christianity, venerated by Catholics and Protestants alike, and admired even outside the Christian tradition. His radical simplicity, his joy, and his love for creation have made him a perennial figure of fascination. G.K. Chesterton’s biography, St. Francis of Assisi, remains one of the most popular introductions to his life — Chesterton understood Francis’s holy foolishness as a form of supreme sanity, a refusal to take anything for granted that most people take for granted. Francis’s influence on Christian spirituality has been immense. His emphasis on poverty and simplicity anticipated the concerns of later reformers, from the Devotio Moderna to the Radical Reformation. His love for creation influenced the medieval mystical tradition, including Hildegard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart. His insistence on preaching the gospel through action as well as words — the principle often summarized as “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words” — resonates with Dallas Willard’s emphasis on the embodied, practical nature of discipleship. In the modern era, Francis has become a symbol of interfaith dialogue (he traveled to Egypt to meet the Sultan during the Crusades), environmental stewardship, and the option for the poor. His example challenges every form of Christianity that has grown comfortable with wealth and power — which is to say, nearly every form of institutional Christianity that has ever existed. His question to the Church remains as pointed as ever: is it possible to follow a homeless, crucified rabbi and also be respectable?
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.— Francis of Assisi
Known For
- Franciscan Order
- Canticle of the Sun
- Stigmata
Key Works
Influenced By
- Jesus of Nazareth
- The Gospel Accounts
Influenced
- Franciscan Order
- Dante Alighieri
- G.K. Chesterton
- Pope Francis