The Poet of Assisi

Interesting, that one of modernity’s most popular saints was born in the heart of the Middle Ages.

[A modern writer] may say … that St. Francis anticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the modern mood; the love of nature; the love of animals; the sense of social compassion; the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity and even of property.… He could be presented, not only as a human but a humanitarian hero; indeed as the first hero of humanism. He has been described as a sort of morning star of the Renaissance. And in comparison with all these things, his ascetical theology can be ignored or dismissed as a contemporary accident, which was fortunately not a fatal accident. His religion can be regarded as a superstition, but an inevitable superstition, from which not even genius could wholly free itself.
—G. K. Chesterton

Today is the feast day of a man who has been described as “one of the most venerated religious figures in Roman Catholic history” and “one of the best-loved saints in the world.” His name may have been Francis, meaning “Frenchman” and chosen by a father whose commercial success in France produced a certain affinity for that eminently Christian kingdom. Or his name may have been John, with Francis being a nickname deriving from his passion for French poetry—more specifically, the vernacular, secular, and often amorous poetry composed by the troubadours. The twelfth century was the high point of the troubadour tradition; it was also the century in which St. Francis of Assisi, who wanted to be a knight before deciding to be a saint, was born.

As Chesterton implies in the passage above, modern society is eager to celebrate Francis’ supposedly “modern” qualities, and not so eager to view him as what he actually was: a man of the Middle Ages, formed by the artistic and religious culture of medieval Christendom and finding in that culture an enthusiastic response to his radically evangelical life. If modernity’s response also could be called enthusiastic, it is at the same time rather “theoretical”: we praise the poor man of Assisi while riding at high speed in an air-conditioned motor car, or standing on the veranda of a five-bedroom house, or chatting in a kitchen filled with sophisticated appliances and stocked with foods imported from a dozen different countries—while Franciscan monasticism grows old and fades away. In medieval Europe, however, it took only ten years for five thousand people to join Francis’ newborn Order, despite the fact that his Rule required the friars to own nothing (even communal possessions were prohibited), obtain basic sustenance by begging, and live as itinerant preachers.

Francis of Assisi received the wounds of Christ during moments of intense prayer on September 14, 1224. His is the first documented case of stigmatization.

A well-known event occurred during a crucial phase of personal transformation in the saint’s life. After a disconcerting incident in which Francis, caught up in a religious fervor, sold several bales of cloth owned by his wealthy father, he announced his intention to serve a heavenly father rather than an earthly one. He also gave back to the latter all that could be considered rightfully his, a task that entailed removing, in public, all his clothes. A strange spectacle this must indeed have been, and it has surely attracted the attention of those who wish to paint the life of St. Francis in the unserious hues of modern culture. But there is a detail in this story that seems often to be omitted: this eccentric young man from Assisi did not remove all his garments, for when he had remade his clothing into a heap of disdained fabric, the onlookers saw that his hair shirt remained.

And what did he do then? It was cold weather—cold enough to not melt the snow—and the saint had nothing: no father, for he had renounced him; no money, which he had tossed upon the pile of clothes; and only his hair shirt to keep him warm. Francis did, therefore, what any man should do when he has discarded the vanities of the world and replaced them with Jesus Christ. He walked out into the raw beauties of Creation, and began to sing. And the language in which he sang was not Latin, not Italian, but Provençal—the language of the troubadours, whose imperfect ideas about human love could benefit from the counsels of a saint, and whose influence lived on in the literature of medieval romance, that is to say, of rupture and desire and adventure and, finally, the return to wholeness.

Francis, who failed as a real-life knight, is now the hero in his own romantic journey toward restoration of the self and reunification with God. And how fitting, that this whole remarkable episode began with a church that was itself a broken thing and, by God’s command, must be restored. Out there among the rocks and trees, away from the worldly dealings of Assisi, Francis knew the work he had to do. He realized, as Chesterton says, that

the way to build a church is not to pay for it, certainly not with somebody else’s money. The way to build a church is not even to pay for it with your own money. The way to build a church is to build it.

Thus did St. Francis become a strange sort of beggar, a beggar perhaps like no other—one who begs not for money, and not even for bread, but for stones. And with those alms and the sweat of his brow, he rebuilt the church of St. Damian.

Perhaps it is customary to say at this point that, figuratively speaking, he also rebuilt the Church, with a capital C. But the Church of the early thirteenth century was not in ruins, as St. Damian’s was, and in any case, to rebuild the Church is not the task of one man. It is a noble and beautiful thing that Francis restored one physical church, in his own hometown, with local stones and the labor of his own hands. A globalized age, like folklore’s evil queen with her mirror mirror on the wall, is haunted by the universal—nothing we do feels good enough, because somewhere out in the wide world there is always another person to surpass, a wider fame to acquire, a bigger problem to solve. It’s an illusion and, like the enchanted mirror, a prison of discontent. Even St. Francis, after founding his Order, ventured forth to solve the big problems: en route to Syria, he was shipwrecked; trying to reach Morocco, he got sick and never made it out of Europe; in the Holy Land, during the Fifth Crusade, he tried to convert the sultan of Egypt, and failed. And back in Italy, his Order—also the labor of his own hands, of his own heart—was in disrepair. He headed home and rebuilt that too, by doing simple things, and being a holy man.

Eight hundred years after his death, just a few miles from the house I grew up in and about six thousand miles from the house Francis grew up in, there still stands a mission built by Franciscan friars. It is a reminder that the universal is indeed within reach—so long as we stay focused on the small and the local, and leave the rest to Providence.

The Dutch Franciscan friar Jan van den Eijnden is wont to say that Francis of Assisi really did not care very much about nature. What we call nature, he regarded as creation. Creation is nature seen in the light of the Creator.
—Dr. Willem Marie Speelman

It was the year 1220 when Francis returned to Italy from the Holy Land, and just six years later his earthly life was spent. Sister Death—whom the saint awaited with joy, still singing—came for him on October 3rd, 1226. It seems that amidst the pain and blindness of his final days, he managed to complete the first literary poem in the Italian language. The Cantico del Sole, a masterpiece of medieval spirituality, is reminiscent of an Old English poem composed by the illiterate cowherd Cædmon; he and the poor man of Assisi, if they hadn’t been separated by a continent and five centuries, would have been good friends.

I leave you with my best wishes for a happy feast of St. Francis, and with my translation of his song:

Most high, most good, all-powerful Lord,
yours are the praises, the glory and honor,
all worship and all benediction is yours.

To you alone they belong, Most High,
and no man is worthy to speak your name.

Be praised, my Lord, with all your creatures,
praised especially with Brother Sun,
the day through whom you illumine us.

And he, the sun, is beautiful,
radiant light and great in splendor,
bearing resemblance to you, Most High.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon
and all the stars—in heaven you formed them,
clear and precious and beautiful.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Wind
and through the air, serene or clouded,
through every kind of weather be praised:
by which you sustain your creatures all.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Water,
so useful is she and always humble,
she so precious and always chaste.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
by him you make the darkness bright,
and he is beautiful and playful,
he is both powerful and strong.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Earth,
she gives sustenance and guides,
she, our mother, brings forth fruits
diverse with herbs and colored blooms.

Be praised, my Lord, in those who through
your love show mercy and forgive,
and bear infirmity and pain.

Blessed, those who endure in peace,
for they will be crowned, Most High, by you.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Death,
she brings an end to bodily life,
from her no man or woman escapes.

Woe to those who go to death
with mortal sin upon their soul.
Blessed are those who go to death
united to your holy will:
they from dying again are saved.

Give praise and worship to my Lord,
bring gratitude and thanks to him,
and serve him with great humility.