St Francis of Assisi 800

Today is the 800th anniversary of the death in 1226 of St Francis of Assisi. For Franciscans, both professed and associates today and tomorrow are celebrated as the  Transitus of their founder, marking his death and his reception into the joys of Heaven.

St Francis of Assisi

The earliest surviving depiction of the saint in a fresco at the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco, and painted between March 1228 and March 1229.

Image:Wikipedia

Wikipedia has a good biography of St Francis, together with an initial assessment of his place in the history and culture of the Church. It can be viewed at Francis of Assisi

There is more about the Transitus, which seeks to enter into the experience for both the saint and his followers in his last hours on earth, at Transitus: St. Francis Embraces Sister Death, at The Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi and at The Transitus (Death) of Francis

To mark this eighth centenary Medieval Histories has a lengthy, illustrated online article by Karen Schousboe,  about the image, in all senses, and often contested in the thirteenth century, of St Francis. She includes Thomas of Celano’s description written soon after the saint’s death and an account of his public ministry in 1222. This can all be accessed at From Jongleur to Icon: The Making of St Francis

His damaged skeleton reveals him to have been fractionally under five feet tall, but regrettably his skull is deemed too fragmented to allow a facial reconstruction. Descriptions vary, and reflect differing emphases by later Franciscans. As Schousboe shows in his earlier ministry St Francis was an energetic and commanding presence before illness, the concerns of his community and the gift of the Stigmata, reshaped his ministry.

The same website also offers a review of the biographies that have been written in the last century and a quarter which is a useful introduction to the range and variety available from scholars, and to the issues involved in the whole matter of St Francis’ biography. The article can be seen at Modern biographies of St. Francis

As both an Anglican and as a Catholic I have had some engagement with Franciscans and Franciscan spirituality. As a historian looking at the Church in the central and later medieval centuries I have also looked at Franciscan history, thought and culture.

Some years ago now there were moves to establish a Centre for Franciscan Studies in Oxford, and promoted by the late Fr Mark Elvins OFM Cap. Amongst the lectures I attended I recall one when the Franciscan friar speaking saying that how work was directed towards rescuing St Francis from the birdbath. This neatly encapsulated a serious truth, and one I heartily endorsed.

St Francis is one of the most beloved and popular of saints, yet is one of the most misunderstood and, in consequence, actually ignored of saints. What he actually said and did was truly radical in the proper sense - that is of going to the root of Christianity, and not seeking a ‘Liberation Theology’ quick fix - and was that in the early thirteenth century and still is in the early twenty first century.

what the Cistercians and St Bernard had been a century earlier St Francis, and also St Dominic, and their mainstream followers were to be to the thirteenth century - rebuilding the Church as in St Francis’ response to the voice from the crucifix at San Damiano or as indicated in Pope Innocent III’s dream of St Francis holding up the Lateran.

St Francis’ spirituality can be understood as a response to the ever more urbanised and commercial world of northern Italy at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but also to the rural world around Assisi. It was very much grounded in Umbrian soil, and as the new Order moved forward the idea of rural hermits in the tradition remained central to the saint’s own vision.

As the Order grew rapidly and compellingly so it led to missions to cities and universities like the Dominicans - the two Orders have much in common, developing as they did in the early decades of the thirteenth century. The Dominicans adopted poverty from the Franciscans, who, in turn, adopted academic study from the Blackfriars.

St Francis reception of the Stigmata was the first recorded instance unless St Paul’s reference to bearing the marks of the Passion be included. In the twentieth century this phenomenon was most famously associated with the Franciscan Padre Pio - St Pio of Pietrolcina - a figure in many ways close to that of St Francis himself and his early followers. This ultimate sign of affective piety and conformity to Christ is very much part of the Franciscan legacy to the wider Church, alongside such routine matters as the Statiobs of the Cross and the Christmas Crib.

St Francis receives The Stigmata

Panel painting by Giotto 1295-1300,

now in The Louvre

There is more about the painting and the three predella images at Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (Giotto)

Image: Wikipedia 

It came as a great surprise whenI first learned as an undergraduate of the profound conflicts and events of the mid- thirteenth century onwards until the mid-fifteenth century with the arguments, divisions and schisms over St Francis’ vision and intention for his followers. This was much more than the preaching to the birds of the popular perception of Franciscanism.  

Conflicting  views as to how to present his life as recorded by Thomas of Celano and then definitively by St Bonaventure, and all that the variants implied reflect the searching nature of the narratives. 

Above all was the crucial and central issue of poverty. This defined and heightened the tensions between the Observants and the Spirituals, led to the continuing tendency to form new Franciscan communities such as the Capuchins.  

More disastrously it led to the emergence of the fraticelli and groups beyond the Order who appealed to its most radical form. These are described by Wikipedia   at Fraticelli

 

Further there was the blending of Franciscan ideas with the prophetic visions of Joachim of Fiore and the millenarian idea of St Francis as the perfect man inaugurating the Age of the Spirit.

In these matters, unconsciously, the poverello of Assisi was Christ-like in another way - he had come to set fire on at least a part of the earth, the Church itself.

 

His life was relatively short, and mostly lived in Umbria, barring visits to Rome and to Egypt, and mostly in and around his home area. His influence was far beyond what he himself could have imagined and has continued to shape the Church, and produced a range of Franciscan saints. He has been celebrated in art and literature, in popular devotion and academic scholarship. He is the saint for everyone, yet remains ever elusive.

May St Francis pray for us