Medieval Catholic Christianity's Finest Hour: The Acceptance of Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone

The transformation of Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone into St. Francis of Assi comes across very much like that of Prince Siddhartha Gautama into Mahatma Buddha, in that they both started out as privileged children of wealth and then willfully chose to embrace the life of holy ascetic service to the beleaguered folk of the world while preaching proper spiritual priorities to a venal world. Francesco was born to a wealthy Italian family, his father a successful cloth merchant. Francesco fell in love with the lyrics and romances of the troubadors, took up knighthood, fought in wars, and otherwise led a blithe lifestyle with a circle of fashionably minded, culturally educated friends. Yet an increasing awareness of the suffering of others, and the temporary though signal shocks of grave personal illness and meditative suffering during captivity in war began to loosen Francesco's commitment to the narrow and selfish concerns of his elite class. And then it all came together in his mind through a mystical transformation in the figure he called "Lady Poverty", his most "beauteous bride". He literally threw off the fine clothes of his social station to symbolize this break, and people were moved to clothe his nakedness in humble robes. Francesco began caring for the outcasts of his society, the pitiful lepers, the refugees of abject poverty, the outcasts of a society that valued only wealth and power. Men and women flocked to him, moved by the example of his selfless devotion. He begged for his needs and the needs of the poor folk to whom he gave aid. He began preaching to those who sought to understand the forces that had moved him to take up such a radical life, encouraging them to literally follow the teachings and examples of Jesus. Francesco taught that every living thing was sacred to God, and deserved the respect and understanding of every human being. He taught that self-imposed poverty gave spiritual clarity and an open sense of compassion. He practiced vegetarianism, and animals did not fear him but came to him, literally flocked to him, to express and receive serene affection. The Church suddenly recognized that this layperson was bestirring a religious movement in their midst. Was he a heretic such as the Cathars of southwestern France with whom the Church was initiating a bloody war to wipe out the sect, or was he a man they could proclaim as "holy" to the people of Christendom? There are scholars of religious history who say that if St. Francis had been born a little too soon, or a little too late, he would have taken up his calling during cycles of homogeneous religious conservatism among Church authorities that would have branded him a heretic and gotten him burned at the stake. And yet, the catalyst for Francesco's final transformation as a holy man came from hearing a sermon of orthodox doctrine: Jesus' call in the Gospel of Matthew to abandon wealth, take to the road with a walking stick, heal the sick in heart and of body, and proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of Heaven exists to be built here on Earth. In the end, the Church chose to recognize Francesco and his followers and have them organized into an order of mendicant friars (the Franciscans) with an allied female sisterhood (the Order of St. Clare), similar in nature to the order of friars they had already created just a few years before, the Dominicans. Yet how great the difference in function between the two! The Domincans, though they could play the role of benign teachers who could gently guide people out of harmful (yet innocent) misinterpretations of the Christian faith, they were also the masters of the Inquisition, which hunted down, tortured and burned recalcitrant, knowing heretics. On the other hand, the Franciscans existed only to help the suffering, and had no punitive function. The Church's ratification of their movement made their ability to receive material help much more easily from devout Christians of charitable mind untroubled by limited finances, and so the Franciscans engaged in more ambitious projects to help the downtrodden and sick in a more systematically effective way. Francesco worked ceaselessly and died relatively young from the sheer exhaustion of laying down the foundation of what he hoped would become a permanent force of service in the world and righteous voice in Christianity. He was immediately proclaimed a saint after he passed -- a rare thing indeed. The war against the Cathars would continue for four more bloody years after St. Francis died, sparing neither man, nor woman, nor child, ravaging cities in the French region of the Aquitaine, the center, at the time, of the highest culture in Western Christendom for poetry, music and art. The Crusading knights who had enlisted in the Papal call to arms became greatly wealthy from the spoils from this holy war against a heretical sect that only wanted to live and let live. Whatever Christians outside the conflict might have perceived as the wrongheadedness of the Cathars, there was a terrible shock as to what the Church was willing to demand and condone against their fellow Man in the name of doctrinal obedience. The figure of St. Francis was a healing and reassuring one for those suffering a pessimistic reaction to the lack of compassion in such an authoritarian Church. St. Francis of Assi has and will continue to inspire people, Catholic and Protestant, Christian and non-Christian, for untold generations. As a sad footnote, his order later began to suffer from the corrupting influence of donated properties, which were causing the order to evolve a venality comparable to the monkish orders. In reaction, a splinter movement of Franciscans seeking to restore the original priorities of the order, calling themselves the "Fraticelli" ("Little Brothers") emerged in the latter end of the thirteenth century, and were quickly branded heretics. Timing is everything I suppose, even with spiritual truth.