| Francis of Assisi,
Saint (1182-1226), Italian mystic and preacher, who founded
the Franciscans. Born in Assisi, Italy and originally named Giovanni Francesco
Bernardone, he appears to have received little formal education, even though
his father was a wealthy merchant. As a young man, Francis led a worldly,
carefree life. Following a battle between Assisi and Perugia, he was held
captive in Perugia for over a year. While imprisoned, he suffered a severe
illness during which he resolved to alter his way of life.
Back in Assisi in 1205, he performed charities among the lepers and
began working on the restoration of dilapidated churches. Francis's change
of character and his expenditures for charity angered his father, who legally
disinherited him. Francis then discarded his rich garments for a bishop's
cloak and devoted the next three years to the care of outcasts and lepers
in the woods of Mount Subasio. For his devotions on Mount Subasio, Francis
restored the ruined chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli. In 1208, one day
during Mass, he heard a call telling him to go out into the world and,
according to the text of Matthew 10:5-14, to possess nothing, but to do
good everywhere. Upon returning to Assisi that same year, Francis began
preaching. He gathered round him the 12 disciples who became the original
brothers of his order, later called the First Order; they elected Francis
superior.
In 1212 he received a young, well-born nun of Assisi, Clare, into Franciscan
fellowship; through her was established the Order of the Poor Ladies (the
Poor Clares), later the Second Order of Franciscans. It was probably later
in 1212 that Francis set out for the Holy Land, but a shipwreck forced
him to return. Other difficulties prevented him from accomplishing much
missionary work when he went to Spain to preach to the Moors. In 1219 he
was in Egypt, where he succeeded in preaching to, but not in converting,
the sultan. Francis then went on to the Holy Land, staying there until
1220. He wished to be martyred and rejoiced upon hearing that five Franciscan
friars had been killed in Morocco while carrying out their duties. On his
return home he found dissension in the ranks of the friars and resigned
as superior, spending the next few years in planning what became the Third
Order of Franciscans, the tertiaries.
In September 1224, after 40 days of fasting, Francis was praying upon
Monte Alverno when he felt pain mingled with joy, and the marks of the
crucifixion of Christ, the stigmata, appeared on his body. Accounts of
the appearance of these marks differ, but it seems probable that they were
knobby protuberances of the flesh, resembling the heads of nails. Francis
was carried back to Assisi, where his remaining years were marked by physical
pain and almost total blindness. He was canonized in 1228. In 1980, Pope
John Paul II proclaimed him the patron saint of ecologists. In art, the
emblems of St. Francis are the wolf, the lamb, the fish, birds, and the
stigmata. His feast day is October 4. Source:
Microsoft Encarta 97
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TEMPLE
OF ST. FRANCIS
About
St. Francis
