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Francis of Assisi
The Life
Augustine Thompson
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eBook - ePub
Francis of Assisi
The Life
Augustine Thompson
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This elegant and accessible biography of one of Catholicism's most beloved saints was originally published as Part 1 of Francis of Assisi: A New Biography by Augustine Thompson, O.P. It stands alone as a richly informed portrait of a man whose complex faith and commitment continue to inspire today. An introduction by Thompson places his biography in the context of continuing discussions about Francis's legacy, particularly the new Pope's decision to adopt the saint's name.
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Sujet
Theology & ReligionSous-sujet
Christian Denominations[ 1 ]
âWhen I Was in My Sinsâ
1181â1205
Francisâs City, Home, and Family
To know a medieval Italian was to know his city, and the man we know as Saint Francis was from Assisi. Assisi lies on a series of terraces on the southwestern slope of a mountain rising nearly 900 feet above the plain in the Valle Umbra, just where the Topino River merges with the Chiascio. The modern city is circled by late medieval walls and covers an area nearly twice that of the early thirteenth-century city. The population of Assisi in Francisâs time, between two thousand and three thousand, was about half that within its walls today. It was a city in Francisâs day, but by the standards of the time a small city. All the citizens of the commune would have recognized each other on sight, if not by name. Below the city in the Middle Ages, circling the mountain, lay the Via Francigena. On this route, Assisi lay about halfway between two larger cities of the region, Perugia to the northwest and Foligno to the southeast. The Via was the route of commerce, linking the region southward to Rome and north- and westward to the cities of the Tuscany and Lombardy regions. A medieval visitor to Assisi would have entered the town at the southernmost corner of its walls, near what was then the Campo di Sementone. This field was used for military exercises and games. The Campo later gave its name to the Porta di Sementone in the current wall. Travelers entered the city through a gate on what is now Via SantâAppolinare, near the monastery of that name.
Once inside the walls, it was only a walk of 100 yards to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, the original cathedral and the palace of the bishop. From the apse of Santa Maria Maggiore, the medieval wall ran almost directly east, crossing one of the principal medieval streets, now Corso Manzini, which passed out of the city through the Porta San Giorgio, where the Corso now enters Piazza Santa Chiara. Angling a bit north, the wall passed behind the duomo of San Rufino, ending at the north corner of the modern Piazza G. Matteotti. The wall then ran up the hill to Rocca Maggiore at the top. Down the hill, the walls formed a spur westward to Porta San Giacomo and then back toward the city along Via Metastasio. In the late 1100s, when Francis was born, this was a neighborhood of wealthy familiesâcalled âMuroruptoâ from the collapsed Roman walls.
The wall then turned sharply south, at the point where the modern Via San Francesco becomes the Via del Seminario. Here, one passed through the Portella di Panzo on the way to what is now Piazza del Comune, or, in the time of Francis, the Piazza del Mercato. In the 1100s, this piazza was surrounded by fortified towers belonging to powerful families. These were razed following the rise of the popolo. After 1212, this new popular government was resident in the palazzo built there on the ruins of the Roman temple of Minerva. In 1228, through expansion to the east, the piazza received its modern dimensions. A little over 150 yards east of this piazza lies the cathedral of San Rufino, reconstructed beginning in 1140 and finally completed through a subvention from the commune in 1210. The altar was not consecrated until 1228, by Gregory IX; the edifice itself was not consecrated until 1253, by Innocent IV. The city wall extended due south from Portella di Panzo to what is now Via Appolinare, just above the modern Porta di Sementone.
The high medieval city thus excluded the areas where today one finds the Sacro Convento and basilica of San Francesco, the church and monastery of Santa Chiara, the Roman amphitheater, and the monastery of San Pietro. Various churches lay outside the walls. That of San Giorgio, where Francis was educated, was outside the gate on what is now Corso Manzini. San Giorgio was demolished in 1259 to construct the church of Santa Chiara. Farther afield, a little over two miles south of the modern city, was the church of San Damiano. Out some two and a half miles to the southwest, during Francisâs youth, lay the then-abandoned church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. It pertained to the Benedictine monastery of Subasio and would later play an important role in Francisâs life. So, when Francis was born, Assisi was smaller, and the area around it was far less developed and urban than it is today. Even after the expansion of the walls in the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, much of the new âurbanâ area was vacant, without houses or other construction. Open fields extended across the plain to the river below, but even there, as in the area of Santa Maria degli Angeli, there were large tracts of woods.
In comparison to large cities like Florence and Rome, or even nearby Perugia and Foligno, Assisi was a small town of little military or economic importance. But it was not untouched by the political and economic changes of the late twelfth century. Previously subject, like the rest of northern and central Italy, to the overlordship of the German emperors, Assisi, along with other communes of the valley of Spoleto, attempted to throw off imperial control. As a result, it was besieged and taken by the imperial army under the command of Archbishop Christian of Mainz in 1174. On Christmas 1177, while resident in Assisi, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa appointed Conrad of Urslingen, already Duke of Spoleto, as Count of Assisi and Nocera.
As was typical of most Italian communes in the later 1100s, Assisi itself was plagued by political factions. A faction of the well-to-do, the boni homines, whose wealth lay principally in rural landholdings, fought other families, the popolo, whose wealth lay principally in urban commerce. We should be cautious about viewing this as a âclass conflict.â The âpopularâ faction was wealthy, and both groups had a stake in rural property as well as in commerce. In 1197, the rising of the popolo of Assisi provoked a civil war that resulted in the expulsion of the boni and their exile to Perugia by 1202. The towers of the exiled families, concentrated in the neighborhood around the cathedral and the region of the Murorupto, were leveled.
The opportunistic factions sought to form networks of alliances (to which later Italians gave the names âGhibellineâ and âGuelfâ) centered on the emperor or the pope. Assisi, constantly at war with âGuelfâ Perugia, has been called âGhibelline,â but this probably meant little politically. After the establishment of the popular government, the commune began the long process of subjugating its contado (surrounding countryside), eliminating the strongholds of the rural nobility at Sassorosso and San Savino. Meanwhile, the city suffered further factionalism as the minores contested internal control with the maiores. This conflict would be resolved only by a comprehensive peace pact among the factions in 1210.
The family of Francisâs father, Pietro di Bernardone, and his wife, Pica, whose house lay on Via San Paolo just off the busy commercial district on the west end of the Piazza del Mercato, away from the mountain and between the local parish church of San NicolĂČ di Piazza and the small Benedictine foundation of San Paolo, was allied with the popular faction. The family house was valuable real estate, in the center of the porticoed streets of the principal commercial zone, with a view onto the cityâs main piazza. When assessed for taxes, it was in the top third of the houses of the neighborhood. Francisâs earliest biographer, Thomas of Celano, was of the opinion that the future saint was âvery rich.â
Francis came from well-established money by communal standards. This does not mean that his family was from the nobility, whether French or Italian, nor did the family have a surname. Bernardone was Pietroâs patronymic, the name of his father, not a family name. Nor did the family belong to the boni homines, who fled Assisi during the civil wars at the turn of the century. Francis himself was very conscious that his parents could not socialize as equals with Assisiâs older noble families.
Of the merchant Pietro himself, we know very little, but what we do know is suggestive. Later in life, when Francis wanted brothers to humiliate him about his ancestry, he had them call him a âworthless peasant day-laborerâ (rusticum, mercanarium, et inutilem), to which he would reply: âYes, that is what the son of Pietro di Bernardone needs to hear.â The adult Pietro himself was neither worthless nor rustic, but rather a successful urban merchant, so this abuse hints at a humble background for Pietro. Perhaps Pietroâs father, Bernardone, was one of those âuseless peasant day-laborersâ who were moving into the Italian cities in the 1100s. Historians have found no records of Pietroâs family, and his only financial doings known involve not his mercantile business, but land investments in the country. Most likely, Pietro, like many country people of the period, came to town to seek his fortune; yet, unlike most, he did very well. He ended up with a prosperous business and a house on the piazza, even if he always maintained a certain sense of inferiority to the established classes. Pietro probably died before 1215. His son Francis never mentioned his death, at least not in any of his extant writings.
Comparatively extensive records in the Assisi archives paint a very different picture of Pietroâs wife, Pica, Francisâs mother. Her father was probably named Giovanniâher son Angelo later âremadeâ his deceased grandfather by naming his son âGiovannetto.â He was probably of local origin and also of a mercantile family. Pica seems to have predeceased her husband, Pietro. She was dead by 1211, at which date her son Angelo âremadeâ her by naming his own son âPicone,â a male version of her name. Pica probably had other children besides Angelo and Francis, but of them we know nothing. Oddly, Angelo himself never appeared in any record as Angelo di Pietro, but always as Angelo di Pica, under his matronymic. This may suggest that his father had died, or that he was Picaâs child by an earlier marriage. We cannot be sure. Records suggest that the successful family business was itself founded on Picaâs dowry. So Pietro, the man from the country, had made a very good match and, on his wifeâs resources, established a flourishing business.
We do not know how he did this, but one can imagine a story out of Horatio Alger. Perhaps the newly married Pietro had partnered with Picaâs father in the cloth trade, learned commerce, and finally established a place of his own in the town. But this is speculation. In any case, the inheritance, of which Angelo later became the sole male heir, was ample. Along with movables, it included the city house and five tracts of land in the country. So, most likely, Angeloâs consistent use of the matronymic âdi Picaâ shows, as it usually does in Italian names of the period, that his fortune came from his motherâs, not his fatherâs, side of the family.
Birth and Youth
As medieval sources tell us Francisâs age at his death and at the time of his conversion, we can calculate that he was born in either 1181 or 1182, years that the chronicles tell us were a period of want, if not famine, in the valley of Spoleto. Beyond that we cannot go. We are on marginally surer ground if we place his baptism on Saturday, 28 March 1182. The practice then in use in Italian cities was to baptize all healthy children in Holy Week during the Easter Vigil on the afternoon of Holy Saturday. Francisâs group of infants would include those born in 1181 after Easter and those born before Easter in 1182. Francis was plunged three timesâin the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spiritâinto the waters of the city font at the duomo of San Rufino, a few blocks from his home. The bishop presided for at least the first couple of baptisms and then stood aside so that he could confirm the neophytes. Some cities in Lombardy deferred the childrenâs first communion until the following morning. In Assisi, Francis would have received his first communion, as a babe in arms, before the altar of the cathedral at the end of the vigil. Easter baptism of the cityâs children was the major civic festival in the Italian communes, and we can imagine Pica and Pietro proudly walking through the main piazza after the festivities, along with Francisâs godparents, who would have carried the child in their arms. A splendid supper followed this, the baptism of a male child.
Picaâs child, whom we know as Francis, Francesco in Italian, may have received the baptismal name of Giovanni, that is, John, as some of his early biographers claim. They also tell us that the birth occurred while his father was away in France. April was the time for business travel, since the roads north, closed in winter, were then open. These hagiographers overtly reconfigure Francisâs family after that of John the Baptist, with Pica as the holy Elizabeth. Pietro is an anti-Zacharias, refusing to allow the future saint to be called âJohn.â This hagiographic modeling of Francisâs birth and naming on a scriptural model began a long process of remaking Francis according to biblical types. The role of biblical models makes it more likely that, from the beginning, he was âFrancesco,â that is, âFrenchy,â a pet name suggested by his fatherâs or maternal grandfatherâs commercial links with France. The name, while not common, was already in use well before his birth, and it was not a novelty, as is often claimed.
Of Francisâs youth, we know even less. As a boy, he was probably sent to school at the hospital of San Giorgio, where he received an education that would allow him to follow in his fatherâs profession as a merchant. Francis seems to have been a younger child, if not the youngest, the apple of his motherâs eye. At school, he acquired a rudimentary knowledge of Latin, sufficient to write simple, if often ungrammatical, prose suitable for business records. For more formal writing and contract drafting, he would have hired a notary. At some point, Francis learned sufficient French to sing popular songs and carry on simple conversations, again with occasionally defective grammar. Francis became so comfortable speaking and singing in French that he did so âspontaneouslyâ and with little reflection. His love of poetry may well have encouraged a love of French (or better, Provençal), the vernacular literary idiom of his age. Perhaps he polished his French during business travel with his father, or with family business contacts who visited Assisi. Beyond the identity of the languages he picked up, how he got them is mostly pure conjecture. In the course of learning the family business, he surely mastered the accounting techniques and practices of the period, a skill he learned on the job, not at school.
About the year 1195, as he was approaching the age of fourteen or so, Francis began to work as an apprentice in his fatherâs business. He learned to sell cloth, keep financial records, and control inventory. It is likely that he even traveled to France with his father to make purchases of cloth. Gifted with a keen mind and an engaging and expansive personality, he quickly proved himself an able salesman. He made contacts and friends easily. Within a short time, he became a member of a societas iuvenum, a kind of fraternity or boysâ club typical in the Italian cities of the period. Such groups were a kind of dining association, providing, along with recreation, networking opportunities for the sons of the wealthy and influential. Francis ran with a youth gang of the well-to-do.
He may not have had the aristocratic family background of some of his companions, but family wealth and his openhanded generosity made up for this. He became the leader of his societas, carrying his baton of office as they paraded through the streets of Assisi. He led them in singing and joking on their way to and from dinner at various watering holes. Francis lavished money and care on these dinners and parties, enough to earn him the reputation of a prodigal. And, to his parentsâ consternation, he often bolted from meals at home to join his friends for revelry. Although his parents tried to rein in some of his excesses and bad manners, seeing their son at the center of the Assisi âsmart setâ blunted their criticisms. It was easy to spoil such a charming and promising young man.
Francisâs personality included a touch of vanity and narcissism. He added patches of old and faded cloth to the silk and fine wool of his cloaks, producing an outlandish, even clownlike, effect. He did not care what others thought of his violations of convention and cavalier attitude toward expenses, so long as they noticed him and made him the center of attention. On the other hand, there is no direct evidence that he was immoral, intemperate, or debauched. Francisâs major flaws were of the spirit, not the body.
The young manâs most endearing quality, after his generosity, was his naturally courteous manner. Later witnesses described his deportment as courtly, more refined than that typical of a merchantâs son. Whether Francis was patterning himself on the knights of the romances, with which he was no doubt familiar, or aping the manners of his betters is difficult to say. He was extraordinarily sensitive. Once, while Francis was busy in the shop, a poor beggar dropped in, hoping for a handout. Francis uncharacteristically dismissed him with a brush-off and went back to work. The affair ate at him. He was courteous to rich men and nobles, but his good breeding had not extended to this beggar. Contrite, he swore to show civility to everyone regardless of class, even beggars asking for handouts in Godâs name, and ran after the man to make up for refusing him alms.
The story rings true. Francis was averse to ugliness, whether physical or social. Pain, suffering, and physical deformity incited a visceral horror in him. He later wrote of this period, when he was âin his sins,â saying that nothing was more revolting to him than the combination of those traits found in lepers. He avoided such outcasts, whose physical deformities were generally considered the external expression of moral or spiritual ones, holding his nose and running away from them. There was a natural limit to his courtesy and good manners.