FRANCIS OF ASSISI, ST. (1181/82-1226), founder of the Franciscans (q.v.), was born at Assisi, his father, Pietro Ber nardone, being one of the larger merchants. His education appears to have been of the slightest, even for those days, and it is diffi cult to decide whether the early biographers imply that his youth was not free from irregularities. In any case, he was the recog nized leader of the young men of the town in their revels, though he was always conspicuous for his charity to the poor.
After a serious illness in 1202 during which he became dis satisfied with his way of life, he set out on a military expedition, but at the end of the first day fell ill, and had to return to Assisi. This disappointment brought on again the spiritual crisis experi enced in his illness. One day he gave a banquet to his friends, and after it they sallied forth through the streets, Francis being crowned as the king of the revellers ; after a time they missed him, and on retracing their steps they found him in a trance, a per manently altered man. He devoted himself to solitude, prayer and the service of the poor, and before long went on a pilgrimage to Rome. The determining episode of his life followed soon after his return to Assisi. Having a special horror of lepers, he passed by a begging leper ; but immediately an heroic act of self-conquest made him return, give the leper his money, and kiss his hand. From that day he gave himself to the service of the lepers and the hospitals. In consequence of his profuse alms to the poor and to the restoration of the church of St. Damian, his father fearing the dissipation of his property took Francis before the bishop of Assisi to have him legally disinherited ; but without waiting for the documents to be drawn up, Francis cast off his clothes and having received a cloak from the bishop, went off to the woods of Mount Subasio.
The next three years he spent in abject poverty, ministering to lepers and outcasts. He began to frequent the ruined little chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, known as the Portiuncula, and one day during Mass, the words of the Gospel came to him as a call: "Everywhere on your road preach and say—The kingdom of God is at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out devils. Freely have you received, freely give. Carry neither gold nor silver nor money in your girdles, nor bag, nor two coats, nor sandals, nor staff, for the workman is worthy of his hire" ( Matt. x. 7-1o) . Layman as he was, he went up to Assisi to preach to the poor (1209). Disciples joined him, and when they were twelve in number they obtained the sanction of Innocent III., and gave themselves up to apostolic preaching and work among the poor.
The character and development of the order are traced in the article FRANCISCANS; here the story of Francis will be attempted. To delineate his character in a few words is a difficult task. There is such a many-sided richness, such a tenderness, such a poetry, such an originality, such a distinction revealed by the innumerable anecdotes in the memoirs of his disciples, that his personality is brought home to us as one of the most lovable and one of the strongest of men. Probably no one has ever set himself so seri ously to imitate the life of Christ and to carry out so literally Christ's work in Christ's own way. His enthusiastic love of pov erty is certainly the keynote of St. Francis's spirit ; hence one of his disciples in an allegorical poem (Eng. trans. as The Lady of Poverty by Montgomery Carmichael, 1901), and Giotto in one of the frescoes at Assisi, celebrated the "holy nuptials of Francis with Lady Poverty." Another striking feature was his constant joyousness, a precept in his rule, and one that he enforced strictly. His love of nature, animate and inanimate, was keen and manifested itself in ways that appear somewhat naïve. His preaching to the birds is a favourite theme in art. All creatures he called his "brothers' or "sisters" and in the poem, "Praises of the Creatures," calls on "brother Sun," "sister Moon," "brother Wind," and "sister Water" to praise God. In his last illness he was cauterized, and on seeing the burning iron he addressed "brother Fire," reminding him how he had always loved him and asking him to deal kindly with him. It would be an anachronism to think of Francis as a philanthropist or a "social worker" or a revivalist preacher, though he fulfilled the best functions of all these. Before everything he was an ascetic and a mystic—an ascetic who, though gentle to others, wore out his body by self-denial, so much so that when he came to die he begged pardon of "brother Ass the body" for having unduly ill-treated it. He was a mystic irradiated with the love of God, and endowed in an extraordinary degree with the spirit of prayer.
The effect of the preaching of the friars, and their example and their work among the poor, was a great religious revival through out Umbria and many new members for the order. In 1212 Francis invested St. Clara (q.v.) with the Franciscan habit, and so instituted the "Second Order," that of the nuns. As the friars became more numerous their labours extended to other countries. Francis himself set out, probably in 1212, for the Holy Land, but he was shipwrecked and had to return. A year or two later he went to the Moors in Spain, but had again to return without ac complishing his object. In 1219, he went to Egypt, where the crusaders were besieging Damietta, and on being taken prisoner was led before the sultan, to whom he preached the Gospel. The sultan sent him back to the Christian camp, and he passed on to the Holy Land where he remained until Sept. 1220. During his absence the troubles in the order that were to attain to such magnitude after his death began. The circumstances under which, at an extraordinary general chapter, he resigned the office of minister-general (Sept. 1220) are explained in the article FRAN CISCANS: here, as illustrating the spirit of the man, it is in place to cite the words of his abdication : "Lord, I give Thee back this family which Thou didst entrust to me. Thou knowest, most sweet Jesus, that I have no more the power and the qualities to continue to take care of it. I entrust it, therefore, to the ministers. Let them be responsible before Thee at the Day of Judgment, if any brother by their negligence, or their bad example, or by a too severe punishment, shall go astray." These words seem to contain the mere truth : Francis's peculiar religious genius was probably not adapted for the government of an enormous society.
The chief works of the next years were the revision and final redaction of the Rule and the formation of the "Third Order" "Brothers and Sisters of Penance," a vast lay confraternity trying to carry out, without withdrawing from the world, the funda mental principles of Franciscan life (see TERTIARIES).
If for no other reason than the prominent place they hold in art, the Stigmata must be mentioned. Two years before his death Francis went up Mount Alverno in the Apennines with some of his disciples, and after forty days of fasting and prayer and con templation, on Sept. 14, 1224 (to use Sabatier's words), "he had a vision : in the warm rays of the rising sun he discerned suddenly a strange figure. A seraph with wings extended flew towards him from the horizon and inundated him with pleasure unutterable. At the centre of the vision appeared a cross, and the seraph was nailed to it. When the vision disappeared Francis felt sharp pains mingling with the delights of the first moment. Disturbed to the centre of his being he anxiously sought the meaning of it all, and then he saw on his body the Stigmata of the Crucified." The early authorities represent the Stigmata not as bleeding wounds, but as fleshy excrescences resembling the nails. In the first edition of the Vie, Sabatier rejected the Stigmata; but in the later editions he accepts their objective reality as historically established and gives the evidence. There exists what is most probably an autograph of Br. Leo, the saint's favourite disciple and companion on Mount Alverno at the time, which describes the circumstances of the stigmatization. Elias of Cortona (q.v.), the acting superior, wrote on the day after his death a circular letter wherein he clearly implies that he himself had seen the Stigmata. There is also much contemporary second hand evidence.
Francis was so exhausted by the sojourn on Mount Alverno that he had to be carried back to Assisi. His remaining months were passed in great bodily suffering, and though he became almost blind, he worked on with joyousness. He died in the Portiuncula on Oct. 3, 1226. Two years later he was canonized by Gregory IX., whom, as Cardinal Hugolino of Ostia, he had chosen as pro tector of his order.
The works of St. Francis consisting of the Rule (in two redac tions), the Testament, spiritual admonitions, canticles and a few letters were first edited by Wadding (Antwerp 1623). In 1904 critical editions were published by the Franciscans of Quaracchi (near Florence) and by H. Boehmer of Bonn. (Eng. trs. Phila delphia 1906 and London 1907.) Besides the works, there is a considerable amount of traditional matter—anecdotes, sayings, sermons—preserved in the biographies and in the Fioretti (ed. Sabatier, 1902. Eng. trs. in Everyman's Library, 191o).
Of the numerous sources for the life of St. Francis and early Franciscan history the chief materials are in the following col lections : Arc/iiv fur Literatur and Kirchengeschichte des Mittel alters (ed. Ehrle and Denifle, 1885, etc.) ; publications of the Franciscans of Quaracchi (list to be obtained from Herder, Frei burg im Breisgau) ; and Sabatier, Collection d'etudes et de docu ments sur l'histoire religieuse et litteraire du moyen age (5 vols. 1898 fol.) and Opuscules de critique historique (12 f ascicules) : the easiest and most consecutive way of following the controversy is by the aid of the "Bulletin Hagiographique" in Analecta Bollan diana. Popular accounts of the sources are given in Sabatier's Vie de S. Francois and Speculum perfectionis, and Lempp's Frere Elie de Cortone.
Concerning the life of St. Francis and the beginnings of the order, the chief documents are : the two Lives by Thomas of Celano (12 28 and 1248 respectively; Eng. trans. A. G. Ferrers Howell, 1908), critical edition by Ed. d'Alencon 1906 and the Quaracchi Franciscans (1926) ; the so-called Legenda trium soci orum (ed. Foligno 1898, Eng. trans. by G. Gurney Salter, 190 2) ; the Speculum perfectionis, discovered by Sabatier and edited in 1898 (Eng. trans. by De la Warr 1902, and in Everyman's Library, 191o) . Sabatier contended that the Speculum perfectionis was the first of all the Lives of the saint, written in 1227 by Br. Leo, his favourite disciple, and that the Legenda 3 Soc. was the handi work of Leo and the two other intimate companions of Francis, compiled in 1246; these are the most authentic accounts, Celano's Lives being written in opposition and in the interests of those who favoured mitigations of the Rule. The whole ground was reviewed by W. Goetz in Die Quellen zur Geschichte des hl. Franz von Assisi His conclusions are substantially those of van Ortroy, the Bollandist, and Friar Lemmens, and the direct con trary of Sabatier's: the Legenda 3 Soc. is a forgery; the Speculum perfectionis is a compilation of the 14th century, also largely a forgery, but containing an element derived from Br. Leo ; on the other hand, Celano's two Lives are free from the "tendencies" ascribed to them by Sabatier, and that of 1248 was written with the collaboration of Leo and the other companions. Thus the best sources are those portions of the Speculum that can with certainty be carried back to Br. Leo, and the Lives by Thomas of Celano, esp"cially the second Life. The official life of St. Francis is St. Bo.iuventura's Legenda, published by the Franciscans of Quaracchi (1898), Eng. trs. in Everyman's Library (1910).
Sabatier's fascinating and in many ways sympathetic Vie de S. Francois (1893; 33rd ed., 1906; Eng. trans. by L. S. Houghton, 1901) seems to depict St. Francis too much from the standpoint of modern religiosity, and has exaggerated his attitude to the church. In articles in the Hist. Vierteljahrsschrif t (19o2, 1903) Goetz has shown that Sabatier's presentation of St. Francis's rela tions with the ecclesiastical authority in general, and with Cardinal Hugolino (Gregory IX.) in particular, is misconceived; that the development of the order was not forced on Francis against his will; and that the differences in the order did not during Francis's lifetime attain to such a magnitude as to cause him the suffering depicted by Sabatier. This from a Protestant historian like Goetz is most valuable criticism. In truth Sabatier's St. Francis as a modern pietistic French Protestant of the most liberal type, with a veneer of 13th century Catholicism, is an anachronism.