Francis of Assisi Lecture Notes
William R. Cook, Ph.D.
Professor of History, State University of New York at Geneseo
William R. Cook was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, and attended
public schools there. He is a 1966 graduate of Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana (cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa). He received Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Lehman fellowships to study medieval history from Cornell University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1971. Cook’s dissertation was a study of a Hussite theologian and diplomat named Peter Payne.
In 1970, Cook was appointed Assistant Professor of History at the State University of New York, College at Geneseo. He has taught there for 30 years and holds the rank of Distinguished Teaching Professor. SUNY Geneseo is an undergraduate college of about 5,000 students located in a village of 8,000 in the western part of New York’s Finger Lakes and about 25 miles south of Rochester.
At Geneseo, Cook has taught courses in medieval history, as well as ancient history, the Renaissance and Reformation periods, and biblical and Christian thought. He has teamed with Professor Herzman to teach several courses, including “The Age of Dante” and “The Age of St. Francis of Assisi.”
Beginning in 1974, Cook and Herzman have taken students from SUNY Geneseo to study in Europe. Recently, Cook has taught a course every other January in Siena, Italy, about medieval Italian city-states.
After publishing several articles on Hussite theology and monastic thought, Cook has focused his research on St. Francis of Assisi for more than 20 years. In 1989, he published a volume in a series, The Way of the Christian Mystics, entitled Francis of Assisi: The Way of Poverty and Humility with
Michael Glazier (later published by the Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN).
For years, Cook sought to find and catalogue all the early paintings of St.
Francis done in Italy. In the 1990s, he published a series of articles in Franciscan and Italian journals on specific images of the saint. In 1998, he published St. Francis in America, a study of early Italian paintings of Francis that are currently in the United States and Canada (Franciscan Press, Quincy, IL). These years of research on the images of Francis were brought to a conclusion with the 1999 publication of a comprehensive catalogue: Images of St. Francis of Assisi in Painting, Stone and Glass from the Earliest Images to ca.1320 in Italy: A Catalogue (Leo S. Olschki, Florence), part of the series Italian Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Cook and Herzman published The Medieval World View with Oxford University Press in 1983 and are currently preparing a second edition. They have also written several articles together on such subjects as Dante, the Song of Roland, and paintings of the life of St. Francis in Assisi.
Currently, Cook is writing articles based on research that was not used in his books, and he plans to bring two great lovesSt. Francis and the city of Sienatogether by doing research on the 15th-century Franciscan Bernardino of Siena.
Cook has taught about Francis at Siena College (Loudenville, NY) and has given lectures about Francis and Franciscan art throughout the United States. With Herzman, he has taught about Francis to groups ranging from school children and religious education classes to Trappist monks.
Cook has directed ten Seminars for School Teachers for the National Endowment for the Humanities since 1983; six have had Francis as their subject and have been conducted in Siena and Assisi.
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Ronald B. Herzman, Ph.D.
Professor of English, State University of New York at Geneseo
Ronald B. Herzman was born in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Brooklyn Prep and Manhattan College, graduating with honors in 1965 and receiving the Devlin Medal for excellence in French. He studied English literature at the University of Delaware as a DuPont Fellow and a New York State Regents Fellow. He received his M.A. in 1967 and Ph.D. in
1969, writing his dissertation on Geoffrey Chaucer. He has also studied at
Princeton University (summer 1973) and as a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow-in-Residence at the University of Chicago during the academic year 1978–1979. Herzman received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1976 and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Manhattan College in 1991.
In 1969, Herzman was appointed Assistant Professor of English at the State
University of New York at Geneseo. He currently holds the rank of SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of English. He has held a number of concurrent positions. He has been an adjunct Professor at Genesee Community College, teaching in the inmate education program at Attica Correctional Facility (together with Cook); he has been a professorial lecturer at Georgetown University; and a guest tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. From 1982 to 1985, Herzman was on leave from SUNY to work at the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he was the founding Program Officer for the Summer Seminars for School Teachers and the Assistant Director of the Division of Fellowships and Seminars.
His teaching interests, in addition to Francis of Assisi, include Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Bible, and Arthurian literature. With Cook, he has team-taught several courses during the length of their academic careers at Geneseo, including “The Age of Dante” and “The Age of Francis of Assisi.” Cook and Herzman have taken students to Europe to study various aspects of the Middle Ages. Herzman has taught Francis of Assisi at Geneseo (with Cook), and at Georgetown University, as well as lecturing on Francis with Cook to Trappist Monks, school children, and religious education classes.
Cook and Herzman published The Medieval World View with Oxford
University Press in 1983 and are currently at work on a second edition.
Herzman’s other books include The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval
Literature (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, with Richard
Emmerson) and Four Romances of England (Medieval Institute
Publications, edited with Graham Drake and Eve Salisbury). Herzman has written extensively on Franciscan subjects, including an article with Cook on the paintings of Francis in Assisi, an article on the Franciscan poet Jacopone da Todi, the article on Francis in the new Dante Encyclopedia, and several articles on Francis and Dante. Chapter two of The Apocalyptic Imagination is a study of Bonaventure’s Major Life of St. Francis. His current research interests include Francis in a book-length study of Dante’s Paradiso.
Herzman has directed nine Seminars for School Teachers for the National Endowment for the Humanities, conducted at Geneseo; at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and in Siena and Assisi, Italy.
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Table of Contents Francis of Assisi
Professor Biographies..................................................................................i Course Scope............................................................................................... 1
Lecture One Why Francis of Assisi Is Alive Today............... 3
Lecture Two The Larger World Francis Inherited .................. 7
Lecture Three The Local World Francis Inherited.................. 11
Lecture Four From Worldly Knight to Knight of Christ....... 14
Lecture Five Francis and the Church .................................... 17
Lecture Six Humility, Poverty, Simplicity .......................... 20
Lecture Seven Preaching and Ministries of Compassion......... 23
Lecture Eight Knowing and Experiencing Christ................... 26
Lecture Nine Not Francis Alone—
The Order(s) Francis Founded......................... 28
Lecture Ten Not Men Alone—St. Clare and St. Francis...... 31
Lecture Eleven The Franciscans After Francis ......................... 34
Lecture Twelve A Message For Our Time ................................ 37
Timeline ..................................................................................................... 40
Glossary..................................................................................................... 43 Biographical Notes.................................................................................... 46 Bibliography.............................................................................................. 49
vi ©2000 The Teaching Company.
Francis of Assisi
Scope:
Francis of Assisi is probably the best-known and the most often depicted Christian saint other than biblical figures such as the Virgin Mary, St. Peter, and St. Paul. He has been the subject of some of the greatest art in the Western tradition, but he is also a favorite figure in backyard shrines, key chains, and all sorts of popular religious trinkets. For many people, he is a warm and fuzzy figure, known as a lover of animals or something of a 13th-century hippie. Despite his continuing popularity and a relatively large body of texts about him dating from his own time, Francis remains an elusive figure in history. The purpose of these lectures is to examine carefully the history and legend of this remarkable man and to follow his influence from his era to ours.
Finding the man who, at about the age of 25, renounced his family and inheritance to serve his God in poverty, simplicity, and obedience is no easy task. Sources are plentiful, at least by medieval standards, but they are hardly consistent or complete. Although we have a body of Francis’s own writings, they are not autobiographical and reveal less of the man to us than we might expect or hope for. Despite the numerous visual images of Francis produced in Italy in the years immediately after his death, we do not even know what he looked like, because none of the images was a portrait in the modern sense.
To discover who this man was and what he meant to people of his own time, we need to use the two types of sources that are most plentifulwritten narratives of his life and images created for the walls and altars of countless Franciscan churches. Not only are these categories of sources quite different from one another, but they also were largely intended for different audiences. In general, the narrative works were composed in Latin, largely for the friars’ own edification and instruction, while many of the works of art were for the purpose of instructing a more general and largely lay audience about Francis of Assisi.
Francis is not simply the sum of the cultural streams that converged in him. Before trying to know this man well, however, it is vital to know something of the cultural, religious, social, political, and geographical contexts for his life. Then we can try to reconstruct Francis’s life and to understand what that life meant in 13th-century Italy.
In seeking to understand Francis’s importance from his time to the present, we must look at his thought and actions. Claims were made in Francis’s own time that he was the Christian who most completely imitated Christ, and there are those today who argue that such a statement remains true almost 800 years after his death.
Francis was not simply a “voice crying in the wilderness,” however; for he started an order that sought to carry its founder’s charism literally to the ends of the earth. As a vehicle for the spread of Francis’s ideas and way of life, what is now a group of Franciscan Orders has played a fundamentally important role in the development of the Roman Catholic Church for almost half of its history.
Figures as illustrious as the painter Giotto and the poet Dante articulated interpretations of Francis’s life and its importance in history within a century of the saint’s death. In the modern world, some of the greatest minds and most creative geniuses have also turned to St. Francis as subjects for their work. Thus, Francis remains as fascinating and inspiring a figure today as he was 800 years ago.
Francis is perhaps best known today as a lover of nature, and indeed, his relationship with all creatures is an important part of his legacy. However, he was more than a man who talked to birds and petted wolves. Francis recaptured a part of the biblical view of creation that had been downplayed, at least in part, because in the Middle Ages untamed nature so often seemed more an enemy than something to embrace.
In a hierarchical world in which those at the top were often prideful and in an emerging world of commerce in which the “winners” were avaricious, Francis practiced humility and poverty. In an increasingly complex world that loved subtlety and argumentation, Francis practiced simplicity. Perhaps observing how he lived in 13th-century Italy can be at least a partial guide for living today. Francis’s embrace of the outcasts of his society, especially lepers, is certainly relevant in a world that contains so many marginalized people. And Francis’s joy, which was never smothered by his own physical ills and failures, is a model, especially to those who find themselves overcome by the world’s problems and people’s failure to solve them.
On the basis of his influence in history, Francis is a worthy subject of study. But there are rewards for those who study Francis, whatever their views of his form of religion may be, that take us far beyond putting in place one more piece of the puzzle that is world history.
Lecture One Why Francis of Assisi Is Alive Today
Scope: Lecture One introduces students to the overall plan of the course. We will discuss who Francis of Assisi was through a brief biographical sketch, and why he is still a vital part of modern culture. We will mention some of the ways in which Francis continues to be important in the modern world and some of the ways in which we can learn about him from his own time: through his own writings, through the writings of others about him, through depictions of Francis in art, and through Francis’s influence on the writings of others, including many of the greatest writers and thinkers of the Middle Ages (and beyond).
Outline
I. Francis and the world at the dawn of the 21st century.
A. The life and lessons of Francis retold.
1. Novelists Nikos Kazantzakis and Hermann Hesse wrote about Francis, and theologians of all stripes have seen him as a model.
2. He has been the subject of three major movies, including one by Franco Zefferelli.
3. The worlds of art and music have also paid homage to St. Francis.
B. Francis has been an inspiration for charity and change. We find soup kitchens and shelters named after him—his influence continues even today.
II. The historical Francis of Assisi.
A. Francis was born in 1181 or 1182.
B. He was the son of a prosperous merchant.
C. In a momentous decision early in life, he began to give away his belongings to the poor.
D. He went to Rome in 1209 to found a new religious order. He also helped to establish a female branch of the order, the Clares, and a third order, for the secular practice of his ideas.
E. The order needed a comprehensive rule. In 1223, such a rule was promulgated by the church, stressing obedience to the pope and allowing concessions in some aspects of the friars’ lives. F. Francis died in 1226 and was canonized two years later.
III. The two Francis’s: fact and legend.
A. Historians aren’t sure about the veracity of some of the most popular stories of Francis.
B. First, we must recognize the incompleteness of contemporary accounts. In addition, the continued retelling of his story over eight centuries creates other difficulties of interpretation.
IV. Sources for the life of Francis.
A. Francis’s own writings, in both Italian and Latin, are an important source for understanding his life. His work ranged from poems and prayers to songs and testaments.
B. Early official biographies supplement this work. Three are particularly important.
1. Thomas of Celano, a friar, wrote the first biography of Francis and another, later, version.
2. The Major Life by St. Bonaventure became the standard work on Francis, commissioned in 1260 and finished by 1263.
3. Bonaventure relied much on Thomas’s efforts. In effect, we can see how Bonaventure used earlier versions to craft his own.
4. These are all sophisticated works of considerable insight. But such accounts are not quite biographies and not quite fiction— they are hagiographies instead.
5. Parallels with the life of Jesus of Nazareth are especially apparent in the later stories about Francis.
V. How Francis and his order changed his own time.
A. The Franciscans eventually moved from being a brotherhood to a bona fide order.
B. The move was a major change—for a group of a dozen men to expand to many thousands.
C. Though Francis was aware of this change, he didn’t deal with it effectively.
1. By the time he died, the order had already spread to several countries.
2. However, Francis’s simplicity of dress, for example, was difficult to imitate in a place like Scandinavia. If one couldn’t imitate his example, what kind of precedent would be set?
D. Eventually, thousands of visual images, both narrative and non-narrative, were propagated by the order. Considering the limitations of literacy in the age, these were extraordinarily influential.
VI. The Franciscan influence beyond the Middle Ages.
A. Francis was more than a medieval saint—he has proven to be a living tradition.
B. The Franciscan Order’s role in world history has been great.
1. Missionaries to Asia and Africa began in the 13th century.
2. The Franciscans’ arrival in the New World, beginning in the early 16th century, helped to found and shape many European settlements.
3. Franciscan missions in the American West were built in the 18th century.
C. His influence has spread far beyond the bounds of institutional Christianity—witness his extraordinary love of nature and its appeal to the disciples of ecology.
Readings:
William R. Cook, Francis of Assisi: The Way of Poverty and Humility.
William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman, The Medieval World View, chapter 10.
John Fleming, An Introduction to the Franciscan Literature of the Middle Ages, chapter 2.
Questions to Consider:
1. Why does Francis of Assisi so appeal to people in modern times despite the fact that almost no one seeks to imitate his life in a literal way?
2. Sometimes people influence their own time but often seem irrelevant in another age. Others seem to have no impact on their own age but are “discovered” later. Francis, however, was important in the 13th century and remains so today. Do these two ages find different elements of Francis to examine and imitate, or are the reasons for Francis’s enduring popularity and influence unchanging?
Lecture Two The Larger World Francis Inherited
Scope: To answer the question of the previous lecture fully, we need to know about who Francis of Assisi was and what the world he lived in was like. Here, we will discuss basic values and institutions that developed in Europe’s Middle Ages. It is important to remember that the time gap between Christ and Francis was longer than that between Francis and us. How had the teachings of Jesus and the institutions that mediated them changed by the 13th century? We will also include basic political and social history necessary to view Francis as his contemporaries saw him. Because throughout his life Francis tried to live by principles of the knightly culture of chivalry, we will discuss its evolution and practice as well.
Outline
I. Francis was born and lived in a Christian world rooted in the Bible.
A. Some of the writings of the Bible were already 2,000 years old when Francis lived.
B. Christians of his time struggled with the differences between the Old and New Testaments.
1. They tended to see the Old Testament as foreshadowing the New, using a method of interpretation known as typology to link them.
2. From such a perspective, David was seen as the typological ancestor of Jesus.
3. This scheme was important for understanding Jesus and Francis.
C. Jesus lived more than 1,100 years before Francis.
1. They both lived in the Mediterranean. Much in the culture and geography of their worlds was similar.
2. Still, even if the apostles became models of behavior for later Christians, 1st-century Palestine and 12th-century Italy were quite different.
II. The Christian world was shaped by the lives and writings of the Christian fathers.
A. The martyrs were constantly present in the Christianity of
Francis’s day. Their image dominated the decoration of the church.
B. But how does one imitate martyrdom in a world that is already safely Christian?
C. Some came to believe that a devoted asceticism was the only way to prove their commitment.
D. The church fathers shaped Christian teaching and practice.
1. An ascetic theology of the desert was popular. Not surprisingly, monasteries proliferated.
2. The Franciscans took vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, important elements of the monastic tradition.
3. Struggles took place within the church over how to interpret the church fathers correctly.
4. Increasingly, some Christians came to be regarded as heretics. The problem of heresy had by no means been solved in Francis’s time.
III. The institutions of the early church developed into what came to be known as the Roman Catholic church.
A. The idea developed that one bishop would become the leader of all bishops—and that was the pope, or the bishop of Rome.
B. How would Francis fit into this structure? How could a new idea like his be enfolded into the ways of tradition?
C. The language of the Roman Empire—Latin—was still the learned language of the church. Although the empire had “fallen” in the West long ago (A.D. 476), there was, in fact, much continuity with the Roman age.
IV. A world that was heir to classical antiquity.
A. Some Greek thought had helped to shape Christianity in the early centuries.
B. Additional Greek thought, namely Aristotle’s, was rediscovered in Western Europe in the 12th century.
C. Assisi had been part of the Roman Empire.
1. Roman remains in and around Assisi are commonplace. Francis grew up in a Roman city.
2. Roman language, literature, and institutions dominated this landscape. People did not see a great divide between the biblical and classical parts of their heritage.
3. Such writers as Jerome and Gregory successfully blended the two traditions.
V. The early Middle Ages.
A. In spite of such cultural continuity, changes took place. After Rome fell, new institutions developed.
B. The collapse of Roman authority changed all facets of life.
1. Urban life declined, and the society became more rural.
2. The landed aristocracy developed feudal institutions.
VI. The Crusades and the church.
A. Members of the feudal aristocracy were asked by the church to partake in military conquest in the Holy Land.
B. Francis tried to transform this military ethic, knowing that Christianity had begun with pacifist beliefs.
C. The Holy Land had been in Muslim hands since the 7th century.
D. The Crusades, in fact, became a safety valve, lessening violence in Western Christendom itself.
VII. The 12th century.
A. Chivalry, romance, and courtly love were described in literary texts written in the vernacular.
B. Such texts trumpeted the ideals of the noble warrior fighting for good.
C. In the end, Francis inherited these popular ideas of his day and sought to transform them into true Christian terms.
Readings:
Rosiland Brooke, The Coming of the Friars, chapters 3–5.
William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman, The Medieval World View, chapters 8–9.
Questions to Consider:
1. In the time that Francis lived, the “shoes of the fisherman” were occupied by the brilliant statesman Innocent III. It is hard to imagine two men who, on the surface, were more different than St. Peter and Innocent. Yet Innocent was regarded as the successor of Peter. What are some of the reasons that the papacy and people’s view of it changed so rapidly between the early church and the time of Francis?
2. Catholics believe that the papacy is both a divine and a human institution. What might such a belief mean, especially with regard to how Catholics both venerate and criticize the history of the church generally and the papacy in particular?
Lecture Three The Local World Francis Inherited
Scope: It is important to understand Francis not just as a medieval man generally but as a man of Assisi, a town of central Italy. Thus, we will discuss some more focused parts of the background for Francis’s life. In particular, Francis lived in a dawning urban world, in which the profit economy was emerging. Such a dramatic development created political and cultural tensions between the old feudal aristocracy and the new urban merchant class. Francis was deeply involved in the often-violent politics of his time. Though the son of a cloth merchant, Francis was attracted to the cultural values of the landed aristocracy, and for a while, sought to become a part of it.
Outline
I. The new economy and the development of the merchant class.
A. In Italy, cities were growing in size and importance.
B. The transition was occurring from a barter to a money economy.
C. Traditionally, usury was considered by the church to be a sin.
1. People borrowed money not for long-term purchases, but to extricate themselves from emergencies.
2. Moreover, there was also a theoretical objection to usury— “breeding money” was seen as a perversion of the natural order.
D. The idea of wealth was also shifting from land to money. The liquid and mobile nature of money increased the gulf between what the church taught and what the world was actually like.
E. Thus, the contemporary obsession with money comes into sharper focus. Francis’s attitude toward poverty was a response to this very problem.
II. The Italian cities and the large political entities of Europe.
A. The Holy Roman Emperor and the pope competed over the question of who had ultimate authority.
B. Italian cities were theoretically part of the Holy Roman Empire.
C. Cities such as Assisi, however, were also part of the papal patrimony.
D. Church-state conflicts of the 12th century, as occurred during the reign of Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), were severe.
III. The monastic ideal.
A. Monasteries were built on the (rural) margins of society. A gulf had developed in the medieval world between city and country.
B. The monastic ideal included the virtues of:
1. Asceticism;
2. Silence;
3. Contemplation;
4. Individual but not corporate poverty.
C. Such virtues, however, did not have as much to say to those people who lived in cities.
D. Francis, then, was an apostle of a new form of monasticism, a voice for looking at the whole world as a new cloister. In effect, he democratized the monastic ideal.
E. The monasteries owned property and were part of a feudal culture of fighting and traditional power.
IV. Social conflicts in Italian cities increased.
A. Several conflicts arose between the landed feudal nobility and the new urban elites.
1. Feudal lords did not willingly surrender power.
2. The “new wealthy” lived in cities and participated in the new institutions and new economy.
B. Francis was a peacemaker in this violent and changing society. He was a mediating figure for a traditional society undergoing fundamental change.
C. He was as much a missionary in this setting as the original apostles were in the pagan world of the Roman Empire.
D. In some ways, Francis’s job was more difficult than that of the original apostles—how to “convert” people who already saw themselves as Christian?
V. The presence of the church in the developing cities.
A. In a rural society, the poor are barely visible; in cities, on the other hand, they seem to be everywhere, begging for alms in the piazzas.
B. In the new urban areas, the problem of the poor was fundamental—and the church’s traditional way of dealing with them was inadequate.
VI. The City of Assisi.
A. Assisi was a small and relatively unimportant city.
B. It followed the same general pattern of development of most
Italian cities.
C. Once a small player in church affairs, it grew to become one of the great centers of pilgrimage.
Readings:
Arnaldo Fortini, Francis of Assisi, chapters 1–2.
Raoul Manselli, St. Francis of Assisi, chapter 2.
Questions to Consider:
1. What are some of the social and emotional implications of a society that is changing from one in which wealth is based on land to one in which wealth is based on the possession of money?
2. What do you imagine that an institution such as the Catholic church, the values of which were shaped in a basically feudal society, needed to do to become “relevant” to the lives of people living in cities and engaged in trade and manufacture?
Lecture Four From Worldly Knight to Knight of Christ
Scope: Francis grew up as the somewhat pampered son of a merchant, and he engaged in business practices, political activities, and social conventions expected of him. In his early twenties, however, he began to turn away from military activities and concern for profits by seeking out both solitude for prayer and an active life repairing rundown churches. His new commitments to service and prayer came to replace his earlier, more worldly values, and in the dramatic gesture of publicly stripping naked, Francis renounced his earthly property and family to embrace his Father in heaven and the form of life prescribed by Christ.
Outline
I. Francis’s family.
A. Anyone who has had a radical conversion experience has ended by rejecting one thing or another. But Francis was a transformer rather than a rejector. His background helps explain why. B. Pietro di Bernardone and Monna Pica were his parents.
C. His father was a wealthy cloth merchant; his mother was French.
II. Francis’s early life and youthful traits.
A. His father’s business was more wholesale than retail. Francis was clearly born into to the entrepreneurial class.
B. His parents were indulgent. He grew to love fancy clothes and parties.
C. At about the age of 20, Francis went to war and saw some of the reality behind the chivalric ideal.
III. Francis’s military ambitions.
A. Francis became a prisoner of war and spent time, apparently, in a Perugian jail. He was eventually ransomed.
B. After returning to Assisi, he was said to no longer find joy in looking out at the fields, unable to enjoy the spectacle of nature.
C. War, it turned out, had not lived up to his high notions of chivalry.
D. Francis would eventually transform himself from a knight in the field into a knight of Christ.
IV. Youthful crises and attempts to resolve them.
A. His father’s cloth business didn’t satisfy him.
B. He began to disappear, going off on his own to pray.
C. Francis got the idea of rebuilding abandoned churches in the area.
1. In a story depicted in one painting of the era, we find him being told by a voice, “go and rebuild my church.”
2. In this case, the “church” ultimately referred to the community of believers—the whole church.
D. Francis went to Assisi to ask for contributions for building materials.
E. He even made a pilgrimage to Rome, at one point exchanging clothes with a beggar and joyfully asking for alms.
V. Francis renounced goods and family.
A. Francis was willing to give up the good lifebut what he surrendered belonged to his father, not to him.
B. When Francis sold some of his father’s goods to obtain funds for rebuilding churches, the father disinherited the son.
C. The confrontation between generations erupted.
1. Francis stripped himself naked before the bishop in the town square of Assisi.
2. He gave his clothes back to his father and said he acknowledged no father but the one in heaven. Pietro di Bernardone was angry.
3. The bishop wrapped the naked Francis in his own cloak. Thus did the church lend at least some support to his gesture.
VI. The naked Francis: “Now what do I do?”
A. Francis went to live among lepers, the most disdained of all groups. Before his “conversion” on the town square, he wouldn’t have gone within miles of a leprosarium.
B. Francis now felt compassion, meaning “to suffer with others,” to fully share their experience.
C. He later said he found more joy with the lepers than in any other episode in his life.
D. Other young men began to follow in his steps—his charisma was already apparent.
E. Thus, Francis stepped from poverty into a deeper poverty still by following Christ’s call to the apostles to take nothing with them on their journey.
Readings:
Thomas of Celano in Francis of Assisi: The Saint, pp.180–214.
Questions to Consider:
1. When Francis was repairing churches but also living at home, he was, in a sense, trying to have the best of two different ways of living. A crisis forced him to choose one. In modern society, we are often told that “we can have it all.” How does Francis’s experience shed light on that popular myth of our time?
2. In a painting in Assisi, Francis and the clergy are shown on one side while his father and some secular folk are on the other. The suggestion is that Francis left one group and joined the other. Is Francis’s situation unique, or at least unusual, or do major choices require one to leave one set of values and even people to change course in life?
Lecture Five Francis and the Church
Scope: Although Francis rejected many elements of “the world” that the Roman church seems to have embraced in the 13th century, he never doubted the legitimacy and authority of the hierarchical church. Francis received early support from the Bishop of Assisi and later received permission from Pope Innocent III to establish a brotherhood that would preach penance. Pope Honorius III later approved a formal rule for the order, and Pope Gregory IX canonized Francis less than two years after his death. The paradox of Francis’s loyalty to a church that wielded great political and economic power and a life that rejected such power and wealth is striking.
Outline
I. What did Francis do after his conversion?
A. The most “respectable” choice would have been to join a monastic order—or become a hermit.
B. He decided to found a new order instead. His decision to do so led to the creation of a new configuration of a “holy man.”
II. Heretics.
A. Church heresies always existed—especially in the 12th century.
B. The Waldensians and Albigensians posed a serious threat to the church, arguing that one couldn’t be an authentic Christian and a Catholic at the same time.
C. Many people feared that heretics would cause trouble for them—both in the present time and for all eternity.
D. In fact, Francis’s group was, at least early on, suspected of being one of these heresies.
E. Did Francis and his followers act like heretics?
III. Papal leadership at the beginning of the 13th century.
A. Over time, church leadership had become more centralized in Rome; for example, the popes claimed the exclusive right to canonize saints.
B. After years of timid popes, Innocent III was elected pontiff in 1198. The medieval church would be defined by the policies of his reign—from his numerous reforms to his ways of dealing with heretics.
IV. Francis and his band of followers go to Rome.
A. How does a band of guys in rags arrange a meeting with the pope? Innocent III, in fact, would have been as inaccessible as a modern president.
1. The support of Bishop Guido of Assisi introduced Francis to a cardinal.
2. Francis finally persuaded the cardinal to urge the pope to meet with him.
B. Weren’t Francis and his followers doing what the apostles, including Peter, did?
V. The meeting of Francis and Innocent III.
A. Their meeting occurred in 1209—unfortunately, we have no transcription of it.
B. We can piece together what probably happened when Francis and Innocent met at the Lateran. No doubt the pope was surprised by Francis’s lack of sponsorship and education.
C. But Innocent III, surprisingly, approved the Franciscans.
1. He was wise enough to see that the church needed Francis.
2. The latter might, in fact, prove to have the lifestyle and charisma to bring people more firmly into the church. In fact, Francis was exactly what he appeared to be.
D. Innocent also believed that most heretics could be won back to orthodoxy—and perhaps Francis was the man to do it. E. Innocent granted Francis the right to preach penance.
VI. The cardinal protector: a link to the Roman curia.
A. A papal liaison was appointed to protect the new order.
B. The appointment of a cardinal was made to advise Francis. Cardinal Ugolino (the future Pope Gregory IX) became cardinal protector.
C. The order grew enormously from 1209 to the early 1220s.
D. The large numbers brought a need to sort the new “converts” into those who were serious and those who were notat least so far as the church was concerned.
VII. The church embraces Francis.
A. The Rule of 1223 was approved by Honorius III.
B. A new church was to be built in Assisi for Francis.
C. The canonization of Francis in 1228 by Pope Gregory IX (Cardinal Ugolino) was arranged quickly after his death.
D. The friars became the papal “army” to renew the church, going to places as far afield as Beijing to spread the gospel far and wide.
E. But a vexing question remained: How would the burgeoning order have to change?
Readings:
C. H. Lawrence, The Friars, chapters 2–3.
John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517, chapters 15, 17, 25, 26.
Questions to Consider:
1. It has often been said that one of the continuing tensions in institutionalized religions is between order and prophecy (in the biblical sense of the term, not in the sense of predicting the future). Can one see the positive relationship between Pope Innocent III and Francis of Assisi as a moment when the person charged with “order” recognized the voice of a prophet and the prophetic figure recognized the need for authority?
2. What are some of the reasons that the nature of an institution changes once it becomes large and favored by the “establishment”?
Lecture Six Humility, Poverty, Simplicity
Scope: When Francis surrendered all of his earthly goods to his father, he had not planned ahead; thus, the way he lived his day-to-day life evolved. He wandered around, lived for a while as a hermit, cared for the earthly needs of lepers, and rebuilt churches. As he engaged the world in light of his conversion, the principles on which he based his deeds—voluntary poverty and simplicity— emerged out of his reflection and experience. A 13th-century biographer tells us that Francis was more greedy for poverty than others are for gold. Francis rejected complex, academic ways of living and responded as directly and simply as possible to what his Lord called his followers to do.
Outline
I. What does it mean to be a follower of Christ?
A. According to the Gospels, what did Jesus do?
1. How do scholars today answer that question? They comb the Scriptures for what he actually said and did.
2. If one looks at the Gospels, however, one sees that the apostles failed to get the message, misinterpreting it time and again.
3. And if it was hard to grasp back then, imagine how much more of a challenge it was to see the life of Jesus through the prism of the 13th century.
B. What were the guiding principles of the earthly life of Jesus?
1. Is there a philosophy of Christ that can be recovered? Some of it is contextual. After all, you have to at least know what “sheep” and “shepherds” are to understand his parables.
2. How can texts from Hebrew Scripture, such as those of the prophets, help?
3. In our own time, how do you translate Jesus’s message into a world of high technology and computers?
II. What does it mean to live an apostolic life? A. What did Jesus tell the apostles?
B. What were the issues of the 13th century, and how did Francis adopt them to Scripture? He found three matters of particular importance.
C. The three besetting sins of Francis’s era were pride, greed, and “complexity.”
III. Humility was the antidote to the sin of pride.
A. Pride was the besetting sin of the feudal aristocracy, and the aristocrats still held plenty of power.
B. Francis became an antidote of pride in his very person.
1. Pride was, after all, the sin of Adam and Eve and of those who built the tower of Babel.
2. The humble Francis was not educated at university and never ordained to the priesthood. He was convinced, however, that he could be an effective example to others.
C. But the more famous he grew, the more difficult serving as an example became. In fact, Francis considered himself a wretched sinner because he had not lived up to the gifts that had been given him.
IV. Poverty was the antidote to the expanding money economy. A. Avarice was the besetting sin of the merchant class.
B. Francis went beyond traditional definitions of poverty to fight this vice: He even went to live among lepers.
C. He gave up the safety net that many other religious people maintained and decided to drop out of the money economy altogether.
1. By the Franciscan Rule of 1223, friars were not allowed to touch money.
2. Francis, who saw a similarity between money and feces, would have no compromise on the matter: The friars were permitted to accept payment in kind for services rendered, but never money.
V. Simplicity was the antidote to the growing complexity of society and encouraged reflection on the proper Christian life. It allowed one to decide what was essential and what was peripheral.
A. The pace of urban life in Francis’s time had increased.
B. The structure of the church had become more complex.
C. The rise of scholastic thought and the universities meant that academic debate and technical arguments were becoming more important than responding directly to the calls of the gospel. Francis persisted stubbornly in his vision of creating a model of compassion for the rest of the world.
Readings:
Michael Robson, St. Francis of Assisi, chapter 4.
Questions to Consider:
1. How does one determine what it means to be the follower of someone else? In what ways did Francis seek to live literally like Christ? What changes and adjustments did Francis make in his attempt to follow Christ, and what are the reasons that he made such adaptations?
2. In response to the money economy, Francis dropped out of the system completely, not even touching money. Most of Francis’s followers, however, were not friars but people who remained in the “system.” In fact, within two generations of Francis’s death, he was recognized as the patron saint of merchants. Whey did merchants choose Francis, a man who had rejected so much of what they did, as their patron?
Lecture Seven Preaching and Ministries of Compassion
Scope: Because Francis took the apostles and Christ as his models, he realized shortly after his conversion that he would preach the Good News to anyone who would listen. Francis was not learned and did not give formal expositions of Scripture, as many preachers of his day did. His sermons, often in piazzas and other nonliturgical settings, called people to repent of their sins and to seek God with all of their being. Francis’s call to preach was not limited to the people he encountered as he traveled through Italy. He crossed the Mediterranean and preached to a sultan. In Italy, he preached to birds, to flowers, and even to inanimate objects. Francis was doing as Christ had commanded in Mark: “Preach to all the creatures of the earth.”
Outline
I. Preaching in the medieval church.
A. Many people of the time could not read.
B. Scripture was available only in Latin.
C. The sermon was the primary way people learned about Scripture.
D. Sermons in the context of the liturgy were often formulaic or uninformed.
E. Francis’s sermons were mostly extra-liturgical.
1. Unlike those of many other important medieval preachers, none of Francis’s sermons survives.
2. We have no formal exegesis from him, but we do have some context for discerning what he said, such as contemporary descriptions of crowd reactions to his preaching.
3. We also have later Franciscan sermons that must surely have drawn from his words.
II. Francis preached through symbols as well as words.
A. In Greccio, in 1223, he read the gospel and preached at Christmastime, using props to illustrate what he said.
B. He brought an ox, an ass, and a manger to the service, popularizing this later Christmas tradition of the nativity—using not miniature models but the real things.
C. He wanted people to experience the birth of Christ, not just commemorate it.
III. Francis’s mission to the sultan.
A. Francis went off to the Fifth Crusade in Egypt with a radical aim:
to convince the Muslims they were wrong, but by way of the word, not the sword.
B. The sultan, however, refused to convert.
C. Francis, for his part, was interested in martyrdom, an act that would truly authenticate his commitment to God.
D. But his Muslim “hosts” liked him too much to comply. Instead, the sultan weighted Francis down with gifts.
IV. Francis preached to the birds.
A. Mark’s Gospel shows Jesus commanding the apostles to preach to all creatures.
B. Francis’s well-known sermon to the birds brings to the forefront the radical simplicity of the man.
C. What did Francis think he was doing? Though he may not have been able to tell how exactly, he believed that God had allowed him to communicate in such a manner.
D. The sermon was Francis’s way of showing his reverence for all of creation.
V. Francis was a peacemaker in a divided Italy.
A. Francis’s first greeting was typically to offer peace, and on many occasions, he did so.
1. He made peace between the Bishop and Podestà of Assisi.
2. He drove the demons out of the city of Arezzo, symbolizing the making of peace between politicized factions.
3. He made peace between the citizens of Gubbio and a wolf that had preyed on them.
B. His ability to do things in unconventional ways was a basic part of his character. He felt the need to trust in God and try the unprecedented.
C. What’s more, he was fearless in doing so. He seemed to take joy in the most dangerous and painful of circumstances.
VI. Francis lived a life of compassion.
A. The word compassion means “to suffer with,” a tenet of the Franciscan way.
B. The compassion he felt for the lepers was linked to the relationship between Francis and Jesus: what was good enough for Christ was good enough for Francis.
C. Francis’s later life was an imitation of Christ, from living with lepers to bearing the suffering of wounds.
Readings:
Bonaventure, Life of St. Francis in Francis of Assisi: The Founder, pp. 596–604, 622–629, 630–639.
Questions to Consider:
1. In Francis’s case, why might trying to make peace effectively involve some risks on the part of the peacemaker?
2. Why is the stigmatization a fitting experience for Francis toward the end of his life? In what way can it be seen as a “reward,” even though it meant that Francis would suffer in his body for the rest of his life?
Lecture Eight Knowing and Experiencing Christ
Scope: Francis was no scholar, though he respected scholars and the role they played in the church. We might say that Francis had an intuitive grasp of Scripture, and some scholars who came into contact with him realized that his way of knowing was superior to book learning. Francis’s well-known love of nature was one facet of how he sought God. As one biographer said of Francis, “In beautiful things he saw Beauty itself.” Francis’s ultimate experience of Christ came on a lonely mountain called La Verna, where according to contemporary accounts, the five wounds of Christ, the stigmata, were imprinted on his body.
Outline
I. Reason and its role in medieval Christian thought.
A. Francis used the Christmas crib at Greccio as a way of saying that experience, not knowledge alone, was what mattered most.
B. He cautioned against pushing the dictates of reason too far.
II. The rise of universities and the beginnings of scholastic thought.
A. Monastic and cathedral schools had preceded universities, which became renowned for the settling of intellectual disputes.
B. For Francis, to define something as basic as “love” wasn’t totally to understand it—intellectual exercise wasn’t sufficient for true understanding.
C. He sensed a danger in the universities, the problem that theology was becoming little more than an academic discipline.
III. Was Francis a nature mystic?
A. Major religions allow space for mystical thought.
B. What does mystic really mean? It can be defined as preparing for and reflecting on the direct presence of God.
C. Francis’s own writings do not set out a specifically mystical program. The one exception to this is the Canticle of the Creatures.
D. Bonaventure says that for Francis, nature is a series of footprints to God.
IV. The Canticle of the Creatures: “Brother Sun, Sister Moon.” A. This is the first poem we have written in Italian.
B. It is an ecstatic poem but rooted in Francis’s classical learning and scriptural knowledge, building on Aristotle as well as Genesis.
C. The third stanza praises death—in doing so, it looks back directly to John’s Gospel.
D. If you probe deeply enough into the world, Francis suggests, what you are going to find is God.
E. This “nature mysticism” is an invitation to experience God. In fact, the nativity at Greccio, earlier discussed, gives us a way in which to understand the canticle.
V. Francis received the wounds of Christ.
A. In 1224, Francis received the stigmata on Mount La Verna.
B. This experience was a culmination of his compassionate life, not an isolated event.
C. Bonaventure placed this mystical Francis in the context of the larger Christian tradition.
Readings:
William R. Cook, Francis of Assisi: The Way of Poverty and Simplicity, chapters 6–7.
Roger Sorrell, St. Francis of Assisi and Nature, chapters 2–3.
Questions to Consider:
1. In what ways does Francis “democratize” mystical experience? In other words, how does Francis take a concept for the spiritually elite and offer ordinary folks the possibility of experiencing Christ?
2. What are some of the most important differences and similarities between Francis’s approach to nature and that of modern environmentalists and animal rights supporters?
Lecture Nine
Not Francis Alone—The Order(s) Francis Founded
Scope: Often, when people adopt a radical and risky lifestyle, they are unable to find anyone to join them. This was not Francis’s experience. By 1209, about a dozen men from Assisi or nearby had become his followers; by the time Francis died in 1226, thousands of friars were living throughout Europe. In less than a century, large Franciscan churches would be established in every city and most towns in Europe. By that time, friars also had traveled “to the ends of the earth” to preach. Some were martyred in North Africa and India, and a friary was established in Beijing.
In addition, laypeople sought to imitate at least a part of the Franciscan life in groups collectively referred to as the Third Order.
Outline
I. Francis’s earliest followers.
A. What did early friars really do?
1. They preached and worked for sustenance.
2. Failing to find work, they would beg.
B. The Franciscan Order soon became clericalized and began attracting educated young men.
C. Precisely because the order was so appealing, it had to adapt to the changes that popularity brought.
II. Institutional changes.
A. A cardinal protector was appointed.
B. New offices in the order were created.
C. A General Chapter was needed.
D. The Rule of 1221, however, was never accepted.
E. The Rule of 1223, allowing a number of compromises with Francis’s personal practices, became the rule of the order.
III. Changes in the order after Francis’s death.
A. Francis’s Testament is his reflection on the order and what he hoped it would become. However, an inherent tension existed between the Testament and the Rule of 1223 that made them compete for followers in the order.
B. In 1230, the pope decided that the Testament had no legal authority for the friars—only the Rule did.
C. But a problem arose: As members of the order grew old and infirm, some of them wondered how they could survive completely divorced from the money economy.
IV. The order and material possessions.
A. Defining poverty was a contentious issue.
1. Although Francis knew what poverty was personally, he never really defined it.
2. The members sought to define it themselves. Although they owned nothing per se, some claimed, they could still “use” things for their benefit.
3. The very success of the Franciscans made them look more like other clergy.
B. The controversy over the meaning of poverty spread.
1. In the 1250s, a dispute flared up at the University of Paris over the nature of poverty in the Scriptures.
2. Critics described Franciscans and their mendicant brothers as false apostles.
C. Some Franciscans looked for a radical defense.
1. They found the work of Joachim of Fiore, who had described the three ages of history based on the Christian trinity: the first, of the Father; the second, of the Son; and the third, of the Holy Spirit.
2. We are, Joachim claimed, living at the beginning of the third age. One of the ways we know this, he argued, was that the third age would be marked by signs of new spiritual men.
3. The more radical Franciscans took this prophecy to refer to themselves.
D. In 1257, the friars elected Bonaventure as minister-general of the order.
1. In his Life of Francis, Bonaventure accepted some of Joachim’s principles but rejected the more extravagant claims of Joachim’s followers.
2. Bonaventure resigned, then died in 1274.
E. Controversies continued: friar versus friar and friars versus the church.
1. For the next 50 years, the Franciscans were riven by division; at one point, they were divided by a pope into two orders.
2. One pope went so far as to condemn certain Franciscan teachings on poverty and arrest and imprison the ministergeneral.
V. The Third Order and the expansion of the Franciscan charism.
A. Many ways existed to follow Francis, including a Third Order of men and women who lived in the world.
B. They were committed to the ideals of charity and nonviolence.
C. They may not have looked Franciscan, but they followed the example of apostolic work.
Readings:
Bonaventure, Life of Francis in Francis of Assisi: The Founder, pp.550–559.
C. H. Lawrence, The Friars, chapters 2–3.
John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517, chapter 19.
Questions to Consider:
1. How is the Franciscan Order a good case study in both the possibilities and problems in organizing and replicating the life of a charismatic individual?
2. Poverty sounds like an easy concept, and it was for Francis. However, when people required a definition of poverty that made sense to legal minds, grave difficulties arose that were at least in part responsible for the fragmentation of the order. How does this situation illustrate the difficulty of defining things that on the surface appear to be clear and obvious?
Lecture Ten Not Men Alone—St. Clare and St. Francis
Scope: One of the most important elements of the Franciscan movement was the female form of Franciscanism, established by Clare of Assisi, a younger contemporary of Francis. Though she was deeply moved and influenced by Francis, she was not simply a “female Francis.” Clare combined her own charism with some traditional forms of monasticism into a Franciscan emphasis on poverty to create a new way for women to experience Christ in His Church. Clare outlived Francis by almost 30 years, and in her long life, she struggled successfully with the ecclesiastical hierarchy to preserve her version of the apostolic life for women.
Outline
I. Women and the church in medieval society.
A. Clare, perhaps more than Francis, has suffered cruel stereotyping by the public—she has even been alleged to have been his girlfriend!
B. But there is no evidence for this. Rather, her own story is interesting even without such gossip.
C. Women were not ordained in the Catholic church as priests. But virgins and nuns, from the time of the early church, lived in poverty and simplicity.
D. 12th-century movements of lay women existed to perform good works.
II. Clare’s family.
A. Clare’s family, more noble than Francis’s, was part of the feudal aristocracy.
B. Clare’s mother had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a long and dangerous journey that was a testament to her faith.
C. Women of Clare’s household did a great deal of apostolic work. Clare’s biographers stress that she was engaged in holy work from her earliest years.
D. Clare observed Francis and was impressed by his spirituality—but she was no blank slate.
E. In 1212, on Palm Sunday, she joined Francis, who cut her hair and invited her into the apostolic way of life.
III. Now what was Clare to do?
A. Clare was placed in a convent of nuns.
B. She brought her own perspective and religious experience with her. She sought a feminine way to live out the Franciscan charism.
C. The nuns were placed in a convent at San Damiano, a church that Francis had rebuilt. There, Clare focused her life based on humility and poverty.
D. How did one live a Franciscan life without a safety net—especially as a woman?
E. Until her death in 1253, Clare, too, struggled to define poverty. Though popes would try to bestow property on her, they would have no success.
F. Her greed for poverty may have surpassed even that of Francis.
IV. The growth of the Second Order.
A. Others came to join Clare, including her sister and, later, her mother.
B. Similar communities were founded in Italy and beyond.
C. The Clares worked for the church and people outside the cloister. More so than for the Benedictines, for example, the act of conversation was an important part of their daily routine.
V. Was Clare a mystic?
A. Her rules, like those of Francis, are not mystical documents.
B. Her letters, however, reveal a kind of mystical involvement.
C. Clare’s life experience, since the time she was cloistered, was different than Francis’s. She expressed herself through liturgical prayer, formulating a way different than her mentor’s.
VI. Clare’s death and canonization.
A. Clare lived until almost 30 years after Francis died.
B. She received a papal visit just before her death in 1253.
C. Clare’s canonization underwent a formal process that had been waived for Francis.
1. The interviews with the sisters and others were done by people from the Roman curia who sought stories of miracles in this inward-looking community.
2. The report, translated into English, makes clear that Clare’s spirituality was deeply rooted both in Francis’s beliefs and her own.
Readings:
Anonymous, Legend of St. Clare in Clare or Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis Armstrong, pp.184–240.John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517, chapter 18.
Questions to Consider:
1. Clare would not have been allowed to travel around Italy and preach and work as Francis did. Given that fact, does Clare’s adaptation of the life of Francis betray her primary model, or is it a valid form of Franciscan life?
2. How can poverty be a privilege?
Lecture Eleven The Franciscans After Francis
Scope: When Francis died in 1226, it was clear that he would soon be canonized, much as people today assume Mother Theresa’s canonization. Indeed, Francis was canonized in 1228, at which time the cornerstone was laid for a new church in Assisi to contain his relics. From that time until the present, Francis has been the most popular non-biblical saint in Christendom, and millions of people have journeyed to Assisi to pray or to appreciate the magnificent art that decorates the walls of the Basilica of St. Francis. Francis’s order evolved just as dramatically as Francis’s cult, and some changes led to tensions with the order about what it meant to be a true friar and follower of St. Francis.
Outline
I. Francis’s reputation at the time of his death: How does Francis live on?
A. Thomas of Celano was asked to write a narrative of Francis’s life.
B. A proper place was sought for Francis’s burial. The pope laid the cornerstone for the Basilica where Francis would rest.
II. The building of Francis’s burial church in Assisi.
A. Elias and the planning of the Basilica.
1. A double church was planned. Francis’s body was moved to the Basilica in 1230.
2. Now began the phase of finishing and decorating the building.
3. Today when visitors come, they find a “who’s who” of late medieval and Italian paintings in the interior.
4. Was Elias the architect of the Basilica?
B. The decoration of the Basilica is profuse. It includes:
1. The work of foreign artists in the early decoration;
2. The Saint Francis Master and the frescoes in the Lower Church;
3. Cimabue and the famous “portrait”;
4. The fresco cycle of Francis’s life in the Upper Church;
5. The presence of Giotto;
6. The School of Giotto in the Basilica;
7. The Sienese masters Pietro Lorenzetti and Simone Martini in the Lower Church.
III. Francis in literature and art in the century after his death.
A. Francis had several followers who were poets; the most famous was Jacopone da Todi. His poems compare his own experiences of privation to Francis’s.
B. Dante Alighieri may have been a member of the Third Order.
1. Dante certainly was an admirer of Francis and is buried in a Franciscan church.
2. In the Divine Comedy, he offers a biographical sketch of Francis.
3. Francis’s virtues of humility, poverty, and simplicity were an important model for an exiled poet like Dante, fallen from power. The poet embodies yet another example of Franciscan imitation.
C. The visual tradition wasn’t limited to the Basilica.
1. Thousands of paintings of Francis were done in the century after his death.
2. They combine a seeming simplicity and repetition with a density of meaning.
IV. Other Franciscan saints in the century after Francis’s death.
A. Francis wasn’t the only Franciscan saint in the 13th century. Others included Clare, Anthony of Padua, and Louis of Toulouse.
B. Francis had appeared in all humility before Innocent III in 1209. In less than a century, the order came to fill positions of high importance in the church—including, with Nicholas IV, the papacy.
C. The 13th century was truly the Franciscan century.
Readings:
William R. Cook, St. Francis in America, Introduction.
John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517, chapters 11–13.
Questions to Consider:
1. Francis loved simple, poor churches and demanded that the Portiuncola be kept in the greatest poverty. How would Francis have responded to the Basilica that was built as his burial church? How could the friars defend the sumptuous edifice as being true to Francis of Assisi?
2. Brother John the Simple imitated Francis by making every gesture Francis made and spitting when Francis spit. Assuming that this most literal notion of imitation is of limited value to the friars, what does imitation mean? How does a person with a different personality and different gifts living in quite a different culture imitate someone like Jesus or Francis of Assisi?
Lecture Twelve A Message For Our Time
Scope: Does this poor, simple man of a very different time and place have anything to teach Christians in particular and people generally? The titles of two recent books suggest that Christians need to get to know this man. Adolf Holl entitled his book about Francis The Last Christian, while the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff subtitled his A Model for Human Liberation. In a broader sense, W. E. B. Du Bois told black graduates in Washington to look to Francis of Assisi as a model, and the best-selling Francis book of all time, Marvel Comics’ Francis: Brother of the Universe, suggests that the saint’s message transcends confessional boundaries.
Outline
I. What does a poor man from a small town in Italy in the 13th century have to do with life in the 21st century?
A. We live closer in time to Francis than Francis lived to Jesus.
B. Francis was a model for “translating” the gospel into new circumstances for everyone from Clare to Dante.
C. Francis’s “translation” still resonates with many people today.
D. Francis is an attractive exemplar of the pattern of the Christian life, whether for theologians or popular writers.
II. Modern writers and Francis.
A. G. K. Chesterton called Francis “the only Christian.”
B. Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff has called Francis a model of human liberation.
C. Nikos Kazantzakis wrote Francis of Assisi, told as the memoir of one of his companions.
D. Hermann Hesse traveled to Italy and wrote several stories about Francis.
E. W. E. B. Du Bois’s commencement address in 1907 lauded Francis. Du Bois “translates” the life of Francis for young blacks, suggesting they model their lives on his example.
III. “Brother Sun, Sister Moon”: Was Francis a hippie before his time?
A. Francis becomes a countercultural hippie in Franco Zefferelli’s film. A historian might criticize the details, but it is an endearing portrait.
B. The popularity of the movie and its music, by Donovan, is enduring.
C. Other films have been made about Francis, including one, Francesco, starring Mickey Rourke.
IV. The best-selling Francis book of all time: the Francis comic book.
A. “Francis: Brother of the Universe” was a Marvel Comic Book special.
B. Five hundred thousand copies have been sold in English and Spanish.
V. Francis of Assisi and ecology.
A. Francis has been declared by the pope as the patron saint of ecology. He reminds us of the sacredness of all creation.
B. Does calling the sun a brother and the moon a sister matter today? Are DNA and nuclear fusion, in a manner of speaking, our “brother and sister”?
VI. Francis of Assisi and the disinherited.
A. It is no accident that so many places of refuge for the poor are named for Francis of Assisi.
B. Covenant House in New York has a bronze plaque in its lobby with a story about Francis.
VII. Francis of Assisi and ecumenism.
A. Francis’s appeal is ecumenical.
B. In his image, even dialogue among Christians isn’t sufficient—all faiths must unite.
C. The World Day of Prayer in Assisi.
1. Leaders of many religions came together.
2. Could it have happened in any place other than Assisi?
Readings:
Brother Sun, Sister Moon (film).
W. E. B. Du Bois, “Saint Francis of Assisi” in W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. Andrew Paschal, pp. 290–302.
Marvel Comics, “Francis: Brother of the Universe.”
Questions to Consider:
1. Explain why Francis and Assisi may be the key elements in bringing people of different religions together for prayer and dialogue.
2. If one judges a person by the quality and variety of people who are inspired by him or her, then certainly Francis rates as one of the greatest people in history. His most important modern biographer is Protestant, and the most important piece of modern fiction about him was by someone who was Greek Orthodox. Although different authors might emphasize different elements of Francis’s being, is there something specific about Francis that leads such diverse people to him?
Timeline
1181–82 ..........................................Birth of Francis of Assisi.
1193–94 ..........................................Birth of Clare of Assisi.
1198 ................................................Destruction of the fortress above Assisi.
1202 ................................................Battle of Collestrada in which Francis is captured.
1206 ................................................Francis strips himself naked before the Bishop of Assisi.
1209–10 ..........................................Pope Innocent III approves the first rule orally.
1212 ................................................Clare is tonsured and later placed in San
Damiano.
1215 ................................................The Fourth Lateran Council.
1217 ................................................First General Chapter meets in Assisi.
1219 ................................................Francis preaches to the sultan in Egypt.
1221 ................................................Friars reject the rule that Francis writes.
1223 ................................................The Franciscan Rule (Regula Bullata) approved by Pope Honorius III; Francis sets up the Christmas crib at Greccio.
1224 ................................................In September, Francis receives the stigmata at La Verna.
1226 ................................................Francis dies on October 3.
1228 ................................................Francis canonized by Pope Gregory IX; beginning of the building of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi.
1229 ................................................Thomas of Celano completes his first “life” of St. Francis.
1230 ................................................Francis’s body translated to the new Basilica.
1232 ................................................Anthony of Padua canonized.
1239 ................................................Brother Elias deposed as Minister General.
1244–48 ..........................................Thomas of Celano writes his second “life” of St. Francis.
1251–54 ..........................................Thomas of Celano finishes his collection of posthumous miracles of St. Francis.
1253 ................................................Basilica of San Francesco dedicated; Clare dies.
1255 ................................................Clare canonized by Pope Alexander IV.
1260 ................................................Bonaventure commissioned to write a new life of St. Francis.
1263 ................................................Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior completed.
1266 ................................................The General Chapter orders Thomas of Celano’s works destroyed.
1288 ................................................Former Minister General Jerome of Ascoli elected Pope Nicholas IV.
1291 ................................................Fresco cycle of the life of St. Francis in the Upper Church in Assisi painted.
1294 ................................................Pope Celestine V divides the two major factions of Franciscans into two separate orders.
1296 ................................................Pope Boniface VIII reunites the Franciscans into one order.
1321 ................................................Dante completes his Divine Comedy.
1328 ................................................Minister General Michel of Cesena
deposed and imprisonedend of the Spiritual Franciscans as a part of the order. 1380s...............................................Beginnings of the Observant movement.
1401–44 ..........................................Career of Bernardino of Siena, the most
important of the Observant Franciscans.
1517 ...................................................Franciscan Order formally split into
Conventuals and Observants by Pope Leo X.
Glossary
Albigensians (also known as Cathars): A Christian movement that developed in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. It rejected many elements of Roman Catholicism and was rooted in the premise that all material things are evil and all spiritual things good.
Assisi: A town in Umbria and the home of Francis of Assisi.
Basilica of San Francesco: The burial church of St. Francis in Assisi, begun in 1228 and later decorated by many of Italy’s greatest artists of the 13th and 14th centuries.
Bernardone: The family name of St. Francis of Assisi. His father was known as Pietro di Bernardone; thus, Francis was known as Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone.
canonization: The official proclamation of sainthood. Francis was canonized in 1228.
cardinal protector: A cardinal appointed by the pope as a guide for the Franciscans and a liaison between the order and the Pope.
Cathars: See Albigensians.
Conventual Franciscans: The faction of Franciscans in the late 13th century that recognized the need for changes in the order.
Fourth Lateran Council: An ecumenical council of the Roman Church, held in Rome in 1215. Francis was probably present for some of the events associated with the council.
friar: A member of a mendicant order. Although the friars usually lived in community, they did not take a vow of stability as monks did but instead carried ministries “in the world.”
General Chapter: A trienniel meeting of friars from throughout Europe that legislated for the order and elected its leader. hagiography: A genre of literature that is the telling of a saint’s life.
Holy Roman Empire: By Francis’s time, the empire consisted of Germany and some adjacent territories. However, the emperors claimed that the emerging city-states of northern Italy were part of the empire, and from time to time, they tried to make that claim into a political reality.
La Verna: A mountain in eastern Tuscany where, according to tradition, Francis received the stigmata in 1224.
mendicant orders: Several new Catholic orders of the 13th century that practiced begging, hence the name. In addition to the Franciscans, others included the Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites.
minister general: The friar who was essentially the head of the Franciscan Order. There were also regional officials called provincial ministers and leaders of individual communities called guardians.
Perugia: A city to the west of Assisi and its political rival. Francis was imprisoned after a battle between Perugia and Assisi in 1202.
Portiumc Ula: Meaning “little portion,” the commonly used name of the small church of Santa Maria degli Angeli (St. Mary of the Angels). Francis rebuilt this church; later, he and some of his brothers came to live in huts surrounding it. Francis died there on October 3, 1226. This church gives its name to the city of Los Angeles (Spanish for Gli Angeli).
Regula Bullata: Common name for the Franciscan Rule, approved in 1223 by Pope Honorius III.
San Damiano: A small church near Assisi. Francis rebuilt this church, and it later became the home of Clare and her sisters.
scholasticism (scholastic thought): A form of theology developing at the beginning of the 13th century that emphasized the use of formal logic to categorize and define theological ideas. This form of theology is most associated with the Dominican Thomas Aquinas (d.1274).
Spiritual Franciscans: The faction of Franciscans in the late 13th century that argued that friars should imitate the life of Francis as closely and literally as possible.
stigmata: The wounds of Christ. Francis is said to have received all five stigmata on the mountain of La Verna in 1224.
Third Order: A lay movement of men and women begun in the 13th century. Members of the Third Order lived a modified form of the Franciscan life while owning property, working, and living with their families.
Thomas of Celano: A Franciscan who wrote two “lives” of St. Francis plus a collection of posthumous miracles.
transubstantiation: Catholic doctrine on the eucharist that states that at the consecration, the substance of the bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Christ. This doctrine was established at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
Waldensians (founded by Valdes, sometimes written as Peter Waldo): A group of men in the Catholic Church who were excommunicated in 1184. In many ways, the original ideas of the founder were strikingly similar to those of Francis of Assisi.
Biographical Notes
Bernardino of Siena: Born in 1380, Bernardino entered the Franciscan Order as a young man and became the most important leader of the movement in the order that called for a stricter observance of the life of St. Francis among the friars. Bernardino was perhaps the most important preacher of the 15th century, and his cycles of sermons, especially those preached in the Piazza del Campo of Siena, give us the greatest insight into the preaching of Franciscan values to a lay audience. Bernardino initiated devotion to the Name of Jesus and used a plaque containing the consonants in Jesus’s name as a prop when he preached. Bernardino died in 1444 and was canonized six years later.
Bonaventure: From a small town in Umbria, Bonaventure had the opportunity as a young boy to see Francis. He joined the order and became its most important theologian, the principal editor of the various statutes adopted by General Chapters, the most important biographer of St. Francis, and an important defender of the concept of mendicancy. Bonaventure was a teacher at the University of Paris before his election as Minister General in 1257. Although almost all of the material in his Legenda Maior was taken from the works of Thomas of Celano, it is a masterpiece of synthesis and provides a broader, indeed universal, context from which Francis can be seen. Similarly, Bonaventure placed Francis’s mysticism into a larger context of Christian monasticism; Bonaventure himself was a mystic who eloquently enlarged the tradition. Bonaventure died in 1274, just after resigning as Minister General and receiving a cardinal’s hat; he was not canonized until the 15th century, although he was venerated from the time of his death.
Brother Elias: Although often referred to as Elias of Cortona, Brother Elias was probably a native of Assisi or its immediate environs. He became a friar and was deeply devoted to Francis, who cherished and trusted him. Elias became Minister General the year after Francis’s death and was instrumental in developing the cult of Francis. Perhaps most important, he was apparently the chief mover behind the building of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, and it is certainly possible that he designed it. Elias’s generalship was a disaster. He separated himself in lifestyle from the brothers and clearly disliked the increased clericalization of the order. He was deposed in 1239, and in the early 1240s was excommunicated because of his association with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Elias was reconciled to the Roman Church before his death and is buried in San Francesco in Cortona.
Cardinal Ugolino: A nephew of Pope Innocent III, Cardinal Ugolino was the first cardinal protector of the Franciscan Order. He became deeply devoted to Francis and was an important figure in advancing the order. Cardinal Ugolino certainly helped Francis to write what became the official Rule of the Franciscan Order. A year after Francis died, Cardinal Ugolino was elected Pope Gregory IX. He canonized Francis in 1228 and laid the foundation for the Basilica of San Francesco. In 1230, Gregory IX issued an important bull giving the friars certain privileges and clarifying the status of Francis’s Testament. Gregory was also important because of his struggles with Emperor Frederick II, for establishing the first papal inquisition, and for his codification of canon law. He died in 1241.
Clare: Clare of Assisi (1193–1253) was born of noble lineage. Her father died when she was young, and her mother was an extraordinary woman who journeyed to the Holy Land and ran a household in which prayer and apostolic work were central. When Clare was about 19, she decided to join the young Franciscan movement. She escaped from her home, and Francis received her and tonsured her at the Portiuncola. After briefly living with Benedictine nuns, she came to live at San Damiano near Assisi. There, a community formed around Clare, and she took Franciscan ideas and adapted them to an enclosed life. She developed a spirituality that was rooted in the Franciscan tradition but is too original to be seen as derivative of it. She lived a strict asceticism and was for most of her life quite ill. Clare insisted on the same radical poverty that Francis espoused. At the end of her life, she was granted the “privilege of poverty” for her house by Pope Innocent IV. Clare was canonized shortly after her death; the documents leading up to this act are an important source both for her life and for the process of canonization in the 13th century.
Gregory IX: See Cardinal Ugolino.
Honorius III: Pope from 1216 to 1227, it was Honorius III who approved the official Rule of the Order (Regula Bullata) in 1223. Honorius had also known Francis before the approval of the Rule. Once when Francis was to preach before the pope, he tried to memorize his sermon because he was nervous. He forgot his prepared remarks but preached spontaneously. This incident is included in the cycle of 28 frescoes of the life of Francis that decorates the Upper Church in Assisi. Honorius was a pastorally oriented pope and supported the Franciscans.
Innocent III: Lothario dei Segni was elected Pope Innocent III at the age of 37 in 1198. Trained in both canon law and theology, Innocent was perhaps the most important pope of the Middle Ages. He is famous for his generally successful political struggles with most of the monarchs of Europe and for calling the disastrous Fourth Crusade. He was also an important church reformer, and the Fourth Lateran Council, over which he presided in 1215, is arguably the most important ecumenical council of the Middle Ages. In addition, Innocent was the first pope to develop a strategy for winning back devotees of the Albigensian and Waldensian heresies, and Francis and his followers fit into this plan. Innocent III verbally approved the Franciscan Order and the so-called Primitive Rule in 1209–10. Francis’s desire to live the life of the apostles plus his unquestioned obedience to the Roman See made him and his followers valuable figures in winning those who were convinced that living as the early Christians had and as a Catholic was impossible. Innocent III died in 1216.
Thomas of Celano: From the town of Celano in the Abruzzi, Thomas probably joined the Franciscan Order after having received a good education. Although he had known Francis, he was certainly not part of the saint’s inner circle. Yet Pope Gregory IX asked him to write a “life” of Francis in connection with the canonization. He was probably selected because of his education and writing skills. That first “life” is still the best source for discovering the historical Francis. Almost 20 years later, the Minister General asked friars who had known Francis to write down stories they had and to send them to Thomas. From these, Thomas wrote a second “life.” This work was meant as a supplement to the first “life”; thus, it did not include events in the saint’s life for which Thomas had no new information. Thomas was unhappy with many changes that had taken place in the order after the death of Francis, and his disappointment and anger clearly show through his second “life.” Some friars found the second “life” deficient, because it contained no posthumous miracles. Thomas then made a collection of such stories. All three of these works were ordered destroyed after the publication of Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior; fortunately, all three works survive, although we have only two manuscripts of the second “life” and one of the treatise on miracles. Thomas wrote several hymns, most notably “Dier Irae.” Some scholars attribute to Thomas the earliest life of Clare, although this is probably not his work.
Bibliography
Essential Readings
Armstrong, Regis J. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents. Vol. II: The Founder. New York: New City Press, 2000.
. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents. Vol. III: The Prophet. New York: New City Press, forthcoming (2001).
Armstrong, Regis J., Wayne Hellmann, and William Short, eds. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents. Vol. I: The Saint. New York: New City Press, 1999.
Taken together, these three volumes are now the standard source for writings by and about Francis in the Middle Ages. They include not only up-to-date translations, but introductions, notes, and maps as well. They are indispensable for the scholar and accessible for the general reader.
Armstrong, Regis, tr. and ed. Clare of Assisi: Early Documents. St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1991. This fine collection of source material for the life of Clare includes many official documents about the order, as well as Clare’s own writings. One of the most important texts is the “Process of Canonization” followed by the Bull of Canonization.
Boff, Leonardo. Saint Francis: A Model for Human Liberation. John Diercksmeier, tr. New York: Crossroad, 1982. Boff sees Francis as a model for contemporary issues relating to poverty and to the Third World and to human liberation more generally.
Bonaventure. Writings. Ewert Cousins, ed. and tr. The Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978. This volume includes the life of Francis (Legenda Maior) and the Soul’s Journey into God, which is a mystical treatise that Bonaventure wrote as a meditation on Francis’s reception of the wounds of Christ, the stigmata. (Cousins’s translation is also the one used in Early Documents.)
Chesterton, G. K. St. Francis of Assisi. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1924. This short volume captures the spirit of Francis with Chesterton’s characteristic wit and flair. An excellent introduction to Francis.
Cook, William R. Francis of Assisi: The Way of Poverty and Humility. The Way of the Christian Mystics, vol. 8. Dover, DE: Michael Glazier [later Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press], 1989. This brief biography of the saint makes no attempt to be comprehensive. Instead, Cook focuses on a few elements of the saint’s life and thought that he believes are essential to understanding who Francis was.
. Images of St. Francis of Assisi in Painting, Stone and Glass from the Earliest to ca. 1320 in Italy: A Catalogue. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1999. In this richly illustrated volume, Cook catalogues all the early paintings of St. Francis that were produced in Italy. These works, numbering more than 200, collectively show a range of understanding of who Francis was and what his legacy was. A comprehensive bibliography is included.
Cook, William R., and Ronald B. Herzman. The Medieval World View. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. (Second edition forthcoming, 2001.) An introduction to the Middle Ages that would provide good general background for this course, this volume also includes a chapter entitled “Francis of Assisi and the Mendicants” (Chapter 10), which is a concise overview of Francis’s life and the Franciscan movement.
Daniel, Randolph. The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1975. Daniel demonstrates the centrality of mission to the Franciscan Order and provides insights into both the theory and the practice of Franciscan missionaries in the Middle Ages.
Esser, Kajetan. Origins of the Franciscan Order. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1970. This magisterial work on the Franciscan Order is written by one of the most significant Franciscan scholars of the 20th century. Detailed and somewhat technical, it is nevertheless the indispensable work for those interested in the institutionalization of the Franciscan spirit and ideals.
Fleming, John V. An Introduction to the Franciscan Literature of the Middle Ages. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977. An important work that shows the influence of Francis and the Franciscan movement on literature and analyzes Franciscan documents as literature.
Fortini, Arnaldo. Francis of Assisi. Helen Moak, tr. New York: Crossroad, 1981. This work is an edited translation of Fortini’s biography of Francis of more than 2,000 pages. Fortini, a devotee of Francis and long-time mayor of Assisi, provides invaluable information about the city of Assisi as the setting for the story of Francis’s life.
Holl, Adolf. The Last Christian: A Biography of Francis of Assisi. Peter Heinegg, tr. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985. A biography that focuses on the literalness of Francis’s adherence to the Gospels and, thus, the radical nature of his life and ministry. Holl deals with tensions between this ideal and the institutional church in Francis’s time and in the following decades.
Jörgensen, Johannes. St. Francis of Assisi. T. O’Conor Sloane, tr. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955. Now almost 90 years old, this biography has aged well and remains readable and relevant. Francis’s joy comes through clearly, and Jörgensen shows Francis as a man of great austerity but without the sort of intolerant fanaticism that people often associate with the way he chose to live his life.
Kazantzakis, Nikos. Saint Francis. P. A. Bien, tr. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962. An important modern novelist’s version of Francis. Like his more famous Last Temptation of Christ, a powerful work.
Lawrence, C. H. The Friars: The Impact of the Mendicant Movement on Western Society. New York: Longman, 1994. An up-to-date sketch of the rise of the mendicant orders in the 13th century. Lawrence is valuable in contextualizing the Franciscans with the other orders and explaining the general phenomenon of mendicancy.
Little, Lester. Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe, Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1978. Little gives readers a careful examination of economic changes in Europe in the 12th century and the church’s responses to them. He thus highlights the changing economy as a context for the rise of the mendicants. Little also explains how mendicant thinkers and practices addressed issues created by a money economy.
Manselli, Raoul. St. Francis of Assisi. Paul Duggan, tr.. Chicago:
Franciscan Herald Press, 1988. Manselli is a renowned Franciscan scholar, and his biography is rich in detail, yet offers a good sense of the larger picture of the saint’s life. The tension between the early ideals and the problems of a growing order is a central focus of this book.
Moorman, John. A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. Rpt. Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1988. The standard history, this is the most thorough account of the history of the friars in English.
Schmucki, Octabian. The Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi: A Critical Investigation in the Light of Thirteen-Century Sources. Canisius F.
Connors, tr. St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1991. Schmucki sets out to answer several critical questions about the historicity and nature of the wounds of Christ that appeared on Francis’s body. He lays out a method for evaluating the relevant sources, then guides the reader carefully and painstakingly through them.
Sorrell, Roger. St. Francis of Assisi and Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. The best scholarly treatment of Francis and nature, this work explains what is traditional and what is new in Francis’s understanding of nature.
Supplementary Readings
Allen, Paul, and Joan deRis Allen. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures. New York: Continuum, 1996. This study of Francis’s great poem provides a rich context for understanding it. One long chapter suggests the contemporary relevance of the various stanzas of the Canticle of the Creatures.
Armstrong, Edward. Saint Francis: Nature Mystic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. This study of Francis and his relationship with nature was written by someone who knew well both the religious tradition and the natural world.
Brooke, Rosiland. The Coming of the Friars. London: George Allen and Unwyn, 1975. Accompanied by a useful set of documents, this book contains important information about how the friars were created.
Clopper, Lawrence M. “Songes of Rechelesnesse”: Langland and the
Franciscans. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Civilization. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997. This work shows the importance of Franciscan issues in later medieval literature.
Cook, William R. Francis in America: A Catalogue of Early Italian
Paintings of St. Francis of Assisi in the United States and Canada. Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1998. This well-illustrated book is a study of Italian paintings in American collections. Cook guides the reader in examining these 31 works of art and discovering what they tell us about Francis and about the way succeeding generations viewed him. A useful introduction helps the reader understand the art that Francis inspired.
d’Avray, D. L. The Preaching of the Friars Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. This scholarly book about mendicant preaching focuses on model sermons written in Latin and circulated throughout Europe as sources for sermons preached by the friars in the vernacular.
Doyle, Eric. St. Francis and the Song of Brotherhood. New York: Seabury, 1981. A friar discusses the meaning of Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures and argues that it is more relevant than ever in our times. Doyle even does an update of the Canticle that takes modern scientific discoveries into account.
Du Bois, W. E. B. “St. Francis of Assisi.” In W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, Andrew Paschal, ed. New York: Macmillan, 1971, pp. 290–302. Du Bois’s commencement address at Dunbar High School in Washington, DC, presents Francis of Assisi as a model for graduates to follow.
Emmerson, Richard K., and Bernard McGinn, eds. The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992. A collection on all aspects of the influence of the Apocalypse on medieval thought. Several essays deal with Francis and Franciscan issues in passing.
Emmerson, Richard K., and Ronald B. Herzman. The Apocalyptic
Imagination in Medieval Literature. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1992. The second chapter of this work is an analysis of Bonaventure’s life of St. Francis, the Legenda Maior.
Engelbert, Omer. St. Francis of Assisi: A Biography. Eva Marie Cooper, tr.
Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press [now Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press], 1965. A good biography that tempers the goal of inspiration with scholarship. This chronological life of the saint is comprehensive and highly readable.
“Francis: Brother of the Universe.” New York: Marvel Comics Group, 1980. With sales close to half a million, this is the best-selling text of all time about St. Francis. The story line was written by Father Roy Gasnick, a friar. It begins with Francis praying at La Verna, then flashes back to the beginning of his life.
Frugoni, Chiara. Francis of Assisi. John Bowden, tr. New York: Continuum, 1998. A short volume that deals with some of the more controversial issues connected with Francis, such as his reception of the stigmata.
Green, Julien. God’s Fool: The Life and Times of Francis of Assisi. Peter Heinegg, tr. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1986. A chronological biography broken into many small vignettes. Green’s portrait of Francis emphasizes the saint’s impulsiveness, and the author calls Francis, “the only true Christian in history.” Green is a well-known writer of fiction and nonfiction; this book is an elegant portrait of a man he passionately admired.
Habig, Marion, ed. Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of Sources. Chicago:
Franciscan Herald Press [now Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press], 1973. Before the publication of the new three-volume set of Early Documents, this was the standard edition of early Franciscan sources in English. Still valuable.
Herzman, Ronald B. “Dante and Francis.” Franciscan Studies 42 (1982): 96–114. Shows how Francis and the Franciscan movement are essential to an understanding of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Hesse, Hermann. Francesco d’Assisi. Barbara Griffini, tr. Parma: Ugo Guanda, 1989. Hesse wrote several pieces about Francis of Assisi. Unfortunately, they have not been translated into English but do exist in this Italian translation, as well as in the original German.
Hoeberichts, J. Francis and Islam. Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1997. Places Francis’s encounter with Islam in the larger contexts of both the crusading spirit in Francis’s own time and modern interreligious dialogue.
Lunghi, Elvio. The Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. Florence: SCALA, 1996. With a useful but brief text, a good bibliography, and numerous excellent photographs, this book is a good introduction to the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, the saint’s burial church.
Maier, Christoph. Preaching the Crusades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. This work examines the connections between the crusades, the papacy, and the mendicant orders. Maier argues that the popes made great use of friars to drum up soldiers and money for the crusades.
McMichaels, Susan. Journey out of the Garden: St. Francis of Assisi and the Process of Individuation. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997. Using Jungian psychology, McMichaels explains how Francis left the collective norms of his era and set off on a life-changing process of individuation.
Moleta, Vincent. From St. Francis to Giotto. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983. Moleta examines how Francis influenced painters and writers who lived in the century following his death. He considers such figures as Dante, Giotto, and the Franciscan poet Jacopone da Todi.
Nguyen-Van-Khanh. The Teaching of His Heart: Jesus Christ in the
Thought and Writings of St. Francis. St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1994. This book is a study of meditation on the Christocentric nature of Francis of Assisi’s thought.
Origo, Iris. The World of San Bernardino. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1962. This elegantly written book, based on San Bernardino’s sermons, creates a vivid portrait of one of Francis’s greatest disciples. The author explains how Bernardino applied Franciscan principles in shaping a spirituality that was meaningful for urban people in Italy.
Peterson, Ingrid. Clare of Assisi: A Biographical Study. Quincy, IL:
Franciscan Press, 1993. Peterson gives readers a full, sensitive biography of Clare. Based to a great extent on her own writings, the book argues for Clare’s original spirituality without rejecting the influence of Francis.
, ed. Clare of Assisi: A Medieval and Modern Woman. St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1996. These diverse essays about Clare and her spirituality and influence were originally presented at a gathering of sisters to honor the 800th anniversary of her birth. The first five essays deal with Clare’s life.
Robson, Michael. St. Francis of Assisi: The Legend and the Life. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1997. In this new biography of the saint, Robson focuses most of his chapters on Francis and key individuals in his life, including his father, Clare, Cardinal Ugolino, and Innocent III. The book contains a good bibliography plus a glossary and a timeline.
Rout, Paul. Francis and Bonaventure. Ligouri, MO: Triumph, 1996. This book explains the nature of Francis’s inspiration for Bonaventure and the latter’s development of a theology that was deeply rooted in that inspiration.
Sabatier, Paul. The Life of St. Francis of Assisi. Louise Houghton, tr. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894. This biography marks the beginning of modern scholarship about Francis.
Short, William. Poverty and Joy: The Franciscan Tradition. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999. Short provides a comprehensive view of the Franciscan tradition beginning with Francis and Clare. In particular, the author explains how the Franciscan Order was both radical and obedient.
Smith, John Holland. Francis of Assisi. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972. A balanced and thorough study of the saint’s life. Smith is particularly concerned with placing Francis in the context of the 13th century.
Szittya, Penn R. The Anti-Fraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. This work shows how dissatisfaction with the friars was translated into a literary tradition and found its way into the work of major figures of medieval literature, such as Dante, Chaucer, and the authors of the Romance of the Rose.
Thode, Henry. Franz von Assisi und die AnfÄnge der Kunst der
Renaissance in Italien. Berlin: G. Grotesche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2nd ed.,
1904. [translated into French and Italian]. This is a path-breaking work on Francis as a figure who was in part responsible for the developments in Italy that we associate with the Renaissance. Although Thode discusses art in particular, the work is more than a study of art history. This somewhat forgotten classic has been “rediscovered” in recent years, and the author’s insights still seem fresh and original more than 100 years after the book’s publication.
Torchia, Adela DiUbaldo. Brother Fire, Sister Earth: The Way of Francis of Assisi for a Socially Responsible World. Ottawa: Novalis, 1993. A brief exploration of some elements of Francis’s life and thought and how they can be applied to contemporary issues. Although the title indicates that Torchia is interested in environmental issues, the book also examines such topics as ecumenism.
Trexler, Richard. Naked Before the Father: The Renunciation of Francis of Assisi in Literature and Art. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. This study of one particular incident in Francis’s life makes use of both visual and written sources. Trexler’s use of principles of modern psychology leads to some intriguing arguments.
