Life of St. Francis of Assisi

The Story

Born into the comfortable, prosperous family of a cloth merchant in Assisi, the young Francis grows up surrounded by the French-influenced courtly culture of his day. He is a youth of charm and high spirits, dreaming of knighthood and military glory. However, the turning point of his life arrives through a series of internal crises and spiritual awakenings. After a period of illness and reflection, he finds himself increasingly drawn away from the ambitions of his father, Pietro Bernardone, and toward the ruined, neglected chapel of San Damiano. Here, he hears a call to repair a church that is crumbling physically and spiritually. This act of devotion marks his formal break with his former life.

The conflict with his father deepens as Francis sells his father’s goods to fund his mission of restoration. Bernardone, outraged and embarrassed, attempts to regain control of his son through both familial pressure and local civil authorities. Eventually, the dispute moves to the episcopal court, where Francis, in a public act of renunciation, strips himself of his clothes and returns them to his father, declaring that he has no father now but the one in heaven. This dramatic separation allows him to embark fully upon his vocation of poverty. He adopts a life of absolute dependence on God, wandering the Umbrian countryside and preaching a gospel of radical joy and brotherhood.

Francis is soon joined by a small group of companions who, moved by his sincerity, resolve to live by the same principles. They travel to Rome to seek the approval of Pope Innocent III for their simple, gospel-based rule. Despite the hesitation of the Roman curia, the Pope recognizes the potential of this nascent movement. With papal sanction, the group returns to Assisi, eventually taking up residence at the Portiuncula, a small church that becomes the heart of their order. As the movement grows, it attracts diverse followers, including the noblewoman Clara, who founds a corresponding order of women, the Clarisses.

The expansion of the order brings new challenges. Francis, intent on spreading his message beyond Italy, attempts to reach the infidels in Syria and later in Spain, though illness consistently cuts his journeys short. He seeks to lead his brothers through example rather than legislation, consistently resisting the push from some of his followers to adopt the legalistic privileges and organizational structures common to established monastic orders. He fears that such institutionalization will kill the spirit of poverty and humility that defines his mission.

Despite his efforts, the order grows too large for his direct, personal guidance. Internal tensions develop between those who wish to maintain his original vision of absolute poverty and those who seek a more structured, conventional religious life. Francis increasingly retreats to hermitages, battling physical decline, including severe eye trouble and the mysterious suffering of the stigmata. During these final, painful years, he composes the "Canticle of the Sun," a poem of profound praise for all creation. In his final days, he is surrounded by his devoted companions and the faithful Giacomina di Settisoli. He dies at the Portiuncula in 1226, having spent his life trying to bridge the gap between the suffering of the world and the joy of the divine. The order he leaves behind, however, quickly begins to reorganize itself into the very structure he had sought to avoid, setting the stage for decades of internal debate over his true intentions.

The People

• Francis of Assisi: A former merchant who discards his wealth to live as an itinerant preacher. He is defined by his uncompromising dedication to "Lady Poverty," his deep love for all creation, and a relentless desire to imitate the life of the Apostles, often struggling against the institutional weight of the Church to keep his movement simple.
• Pietro Bernardone: Francis's father, a wealthy cloth merchant. He represents the material and social ambitions of the rising middle class. He is humiliated by his son’s choice of life and views the radical renunciation of property as a betrayal of his family’s honor and financial future.
• The First Companions: A group of early followers who share Francis’s vision. They are characterized by their willingness to remain anonymous and their shared life of joy, manual labor, and mendicancy. They represent the communal, spontaneous spirit of the early movement before it becomes an institution.
• Clara (Santa Clara): A noblewoman who is deeply moved by Francis’s preaching. She establishes the order of the Clarisses, choosing to live in total enclosure and poverty. She remains one of the few who fully understands the necessity of the sacrifice Francis demands.
• Cardinal Ugolini (later Pope Gregory IX): A protector and advisor to the order. He represents the perspective of the Roman curia, balancing genuine admiration for Francis’s sanctity with the pragmatic desire to bring the unruly, radical movement under the control and structure of the institutional Church.

In Its Own Voice

Reflecting on his early disillusionment with the world of merchants and soldiers, Francis turns his attention to the life of the spirit:

"He learned also to write, but with less success; all through his life we see him take up the pen only on rare occasions, and for but a few words."

While attempting to live a life of prayer away from the noise of the city, Francis speaks of his need to remain connected to the struggles of his brothers:

"They think me a holy man," he said, "and see, it needed demons to cast me out of prison."

As he nears the end of his life, suffering from severe illness and pain, Francis finds beauty even in the medical treatments forced upon him:

"Brother fire," he said, "you are beautiful above all creatures; be favorable to me in this hour; you know how much I have always loved you; be then courteous to-day."

What It's Really About

At its core, this biography explores the tension between the charismatic, spontaneous nature of a religious movement and its inevitable institutionalization. It examines the "evangelical" life—a commitment to following the Gospel with literal, almost dangerous, simplicity. The central conflict is not just between a saint and his father, but between the individual conscience and the established power of the medieval Church. The book argues that Francis’s strength lay in his refusal to accept privilege, and that his eventual defeat in this struggle—the transformation of his loose band of brothers into a regulated order—is the true tragedy of his life.

The book is deeply concerned with the nature of poverty, not as a mere lack of money, but as a path to total freedom. By stripping himself of property, Francis gains a new relationship with the world, where "having nothing, yet possessing all things" becomes a literal reality. This is not a asceticism born of hatred for the world, but of a profound, almost reckless love for it. The author posits that Francis was essentially a man of the people, whose success came from speaking to the hearts of those who felt left behind by the rigid, ritualized religion of the time.

Furthermore, the book serves as a historical detective story. It investigates the sources of the Franciscan legend, peeling back the layers of later hagiography to find the historical man. It provides a nuanced look at the politics of the thirteenth century, showing how the papacy utilized such movements to reinvigorate the faith, while simultaneously domesticating them to prevent them from becoming genuine threats to order. The questioning of the stigmata and the miraculous elements is handled with a gentle, scholarly precision that honors the sincerity of the medieval mind while keeping a modern analytical eye. It is a work about the difficulty of maintaining purity of intent in a world that always demands compromise. The reader is constantly invited to witness how the joy of the early years is slowly subsumed by the machinery of the institution, leaving only the memory of the "Little Brother" as a witness to what could have been.

Why Read It Today

This book will appeal to anyone drawn to the history of ideas or the biographies of figures who attempted to live in radical opposition to their culture. It is a work of immense empathy, written by someone who has clearly spent years walking the streets of Assisi and reading the fragmented, often contradictory accounts of the saint’s life. The prose is warm and scholarly, avoiding the dry detachment of some historical texts while rejecting the hagiographic tone of others. It captures the atmosphere of the Middle Ages—the dirt, the cold, the fervent piety, and the constant threat of war—with remarkable clarity.

Readers should be prepared for the book's pacing, which is deliberate and reflective. It is not a fast-paced thriller; it is a meditation on a life. The author frequently engages with historical sources, footnotes, and the reliability of documents, which may feel dense to those expecting a strictly narrative experience. However, these detours are essential to the author’s argument about how the "real" Francis was obscured by later generations. The period attitudes can sometimes be challenging, particularly when the author discusses the medieval belief in relics or miracles, but he does so with a respect for the psychological reality of those who lived then.

What stays with you is the image of Francis as a man who was deeply, painfully human. He is not a marble statue of a saint, but a man who was afraid of the dark, who loved music when he was in pain, and who felt betrayed by the very order he founded. The book leaves a lingering sense of melancholy, a recognition that the world often demands the taming of its greatest spirits. For those interested in how a simple, local religious impulse grew into a global phenomenon—and the human cost of that growth—this book provides a profound and deeply honest account. You are left not with a saint in a stained-glass window, but with a man who walked the hills of Umbria and asked everyone he met to look at the world with the same wonder he felt.