When I left them, that which had seemed to me bitter had become sweet and easy. This lead to Saint Francis being financially cut off from his father. Saint Francis then left Assisi for a while and settled in a town called Gubbio. Here, a wolf was tormenting a town. Saint Francis is said to have domesticated and tamed the wolf, ending its tormenting. The group preached on the streets and had little to no possessions. From this point on, the order rapidly grew.
The order became divided into provinces and different groups of the friars were sent to France, Germany, Hungary, and Spain and to the East. Upon hearing about five brothers dying for their faith in Morocco, Francis returned to Italy through Venice. Today, three separate congregations, or sects, exist. Franciscans are sometimes referred to as minorities or greyfriars because of their habit.
In Poland and Lithuania they are known as Bernardines. Marks, sores, sensations of pain in the hands, wrists, and feet are called stigmata. A stigma corresponds to the wounds Jesus Christ suffered during his crucifixion.
When someone bears these wounds, they are referred to as a stigmatist or a stigmatic. Saint Francis is the first recorded stigmatic. This angel gave him the gift of the five wounds of Christ. He was about 45 years old when he died. Immediately after, the Basilica of Saint Francis was constructed in Assisi. Saint Francis was buried on May 25, , under the Lower Basilica.
Instead of planning a future as a merchant, he began daydreaming of a future as a knight; knights were Medieval action heroes, and if Francis had any ambition, it was to be a war hero like them. It wouldn't be long before the opportunity for warfare beckoned. In war broke between Assisi and Perugia, and Francis eagerly took his place with the cavalry.
Little did he know at the time, his experience with war would change him forever. Francis and the men of Assisi came under heavy attack, and in the face of superior numbers, they took flight. The whole battlefield was soon covered with the bodies of butchered, mutilated men, screaming in agony. Most of the surviving Assisi troops were immediately put to death. Unskilled and with no combat experience, Francis was quickly captured by enemy soldiers.
Dressed like an aristocrat and wearing expensive new armor, he was considered worthy of a decent ransom, and the soldiers decided to spare his life. He and the other wealthy troops were taken as prisoners, led off to a dank underground cell.
Francis would spend nearly a year in such miserable conditions — awaiting his father's payment — during which time he may well have contracted a serious disease. Also during this time, he would later report, he began to receive visions from God. After a year of negotiations, Francis' ransom was accepted, and he was released from prison in When he came back to Assisi, however, Francis was a very different man. Upon his return, he was dangerously sick in both mind and body — a battle-fatigued casualty of war.
One day, as legend has it, while riding on a horse in the local countryside, Francis encountered a leper. Prior to the war, Francis would have run from the leper, but on this occasion, his behavior was very different. Viewing the leper as a symbol of moral conscience — or as Jesus incognito, according to some religious scholars — he embraced and kissed him, later describing the experience as a feeling of sweetness in his mouth. After this incident, Francis felt an indescribable freedom.
His earlier lifestyle had lost all of its appeal. Subsequently, Francis, now in his early 20s, began turning his focus toward God. Instead of working, he spent an ever-increasing amount of time at a remote mountain hideaway as well as in old, quiet churches around Assisi, praying, looking for answers, and helping nurse lepers. During this time, while praying before an old Byzantine crucifix at the church of San Damiano, Francis reportedly heard the voice of Christ, who told him to rebuild the Christian Church and to live a life of extreme poverty.
Francis obeyed and devoted himself to Christianity. He began preaching around Assisi and was soon joined by 12 loyal followers. Some regarded Francis as a madman or a fool, but others viewed him as one of the greatest examples of how to live the Christian ideal since Jesus Christ himself.
After his epiphany at the church of San Damiano, Francis experienced another defining moment in his life. In order to raise money to rebuild the Christian church, he sold a bolt of cloth from his father's shop, along with his horse. Peter's, some distance from the city, and St.
Mary of the Angels, in the plain below it, at a spot called the Porziuncola. Meantime he redoubled his zeal in works of charity , more especially in nursing the lepers. On a certain morning in , probably 24 February, Francis was hearing Mass in the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, near which he had then built himself a hut; the Gospel of the day told how the disciples of Christ were to possess neither gold nor silver, nor scrip for their journey, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor a staff, and that they were to exhort sinners to repentance and announce the Kingdom of God.
Francis took these words as if spoken directly to himself, and so soon as Mass was over threw away the poor fragment left him of the world's goods , his shoes, cloak, pilgrim staff, and empty wallet.
At last he had found his vocation. Having obtained a coarse woolen tunic of "beast colour", the dress then worn by the poorest Umbrian peasants, and tied it round him with a knotted rope, Francis went forth at once exhorting the people of the country-side to penance , brotherly love , and peace. The Assisians had already ceased to scoff at Francis; they now paused in wonderment; his example even drew others to him. Bernard of Quintavalle, a magnate of the town, was the first to join Francis, and he was soon followed by Peter of Cattaneo, a well-known canon of the cathedral.
In true spirit of religious enthusiasm , Francis repaired to the church of St. Nicholas and sought to learn God's will in their regard by thrice opening at random the book of the Gospels on the altar.
Each time it opened at passages where Christ told His disciples to leave all things and follow Him. After this they procured rough habits like that of Francis, and built themselves small huts near his at the Porziuncola. A few days later Giles, afterwards the great ecstatic and sayer of "good words", became the third follower of Francis.
The little band divided and went about, two and two, making such an impression by their words and behaviour that before long several other disciples grouped themselves round Francis eager to share his poverty , among them being Sabatinus, vir bonus et justus , Moricus, who had belonged to the Crucigeri, John of Capella, who afterwards fell away, Philip "the Long", and four others of whom we know only the names.
When the number of his companions had increased to eleven, Francis found it expedient to draw up a written rule for them. This first rule, as it is called, of the Friars Minor has not come down to us in its original form, but it appears to have been very short and simple, a mere adaptation of the Gospel precepts already selected by Francis for the guidance of his first companions, and which he desired to practice in all their perfection.
When this rule was ready the Penitents of Assisi, as Francis and his followers styled themselves, set out for Rome to seek the approval of the Holy See , although as yet no such approbation was obligatory.
Paul, and that at the instance of the latter, the pope recalled the saint whose first overtures he had, as it appears, somewhat rudely rejected.
Moreover, in site of the sinister predictions of others in the Sacred College , who regarded the mode of life proposed by Francis as unsafe and impracticable, Innocent , moved it is said by a dream in which he beheld the Poor Man of Assisi upholding the tottering Lateran , gave a verbal sanction to the rule submitted by Francis and granted the saint and his companions leave to preach repentance everywhere. Before leaving Rome they all received the ecclesiastical tonsure , Francis himself being ordained deacon later on.
About they obtained a permanent foothold near Assisi , through the generosity of the Benedictines of Monte Subasio, who gave them the little chapel of St. Mary of the Angels or the Porziuncola. Adjoining this humble sanctuary , already dear to Francis, the first Franciscan convent was formed by the erection of a few small huts or cells of wattle, straw, and mud, and enclosed by a hedge. From this settlement, which became the cradle of the Franciscan Order Caput et Mater Ordinis and the central spot in the life of St.
Francis, the Friars Minor went forth two by two exhorting the people of the surrounding country. Like children "careless of the day", they wandered from place to place singing in their joy, and calling themselves the Lord's minstrels.
The wide world was their cloister ; sleeping in haylofts, grottos, or church porches , they toiled with the labourers in the fields, and when none gave them work they would beg. In a short while Francis and his companions gained an immense influence, and men of different grades of life and ways of thought flocked to the order.
Among the new recruits made about this time by Francis were the famous Three Companions, who afterwards wrote his life, namely: Angelus Tancredi, a noble cavalier; Leo , the saint's secretary and confessor; and Rufinus, a cousin of St. Clare ; besides Juniper, "the renowned jester of the Lord".
During the Lent of , a new joy , great as it was unexpected, came to Francis. Clare , a young heiress of Assisi , moved by the saint's preaching at the church of St. George, sought him out, and begged to be allowed to embrace the new manner of life he had founded.
By his advice, Clare , who was then but eighteen, secretly left her father's house on the night following Palm Sunday , and with two companions went to the Porziuncola , where the friars met her in procession , carrying lighted torches. Then Francis, having cut off her hair , clothed her in the Minorite habit and thus received her to a life of poverty , penance , and seclusion. Clare stayed provisionally with some Benedictine nuns near Assisi , until Francis could provide a suitable retreat for her, and for St.
Agnes , her sister, and the other pious maidens who had joined her. He eventually established them at St. Damian's, in a dwelling adjoining the chapel he had rebuilt with his own hands, which was now given to the saint by the Benedictines as domicile for his spiritual daughters, and which thus became the first monastery of the Second Franciscan Order of Poor Ladies, now known as Poor Clares.
In the autumn of the same year Francis's burning desire for the conversion of the Saracens led him to embark for Syria , but having been shipwrecked on the coast of Slavonia, he had to return to Ancona. The following spring he devoted himself to evangelizing Central Italy. About this time Francis received from Count Orlando of Chiusi the mountain of La Verna , an isolated peak among the Tuscan Apennines, rising some feet above the valley of the Casentino, as a retreat , "especially favourable for contemplation ", to which he might retire from time to time for prayer and rest.
For Francis never altogether separated the contemplative from the active life, as the several hermitages associated with his memory, and the quaint regulations he wrote for those living in them bear witness.
At one time , indeed, a strong desire to give himself wholly to a life of contemplation seems to have possessed the saint. During the next year Francis set out for Morocco , in another attempt to reach the infidels and, if needs be, to shed his blood for the Gospel , but while yet in Spain was overtaken by so severe an illness that he was compelled to turn back to Italy once more. Authentic details are unfortunately lacking of Francis's journey to Spain and sojourn there.
It probably took place in the winter of After his return to Umbria he received several noble and learned men into his order, including his future biographer Thomas of Celano. The next eighteen months comprise, perhaps, the most obscure period of the saint's life.
That he took part in the Lateran Council of may well be, but it is not certain ; we know from Eccleston , however, that Francis was present at the death of Innocent III , which took place at Perugia , in July Shortly afterwards, i.
It is related that once, while Francis was praying at the Porziuncola , Christ appeared to him and offered him whatever favour he might desire. The salvation of souls was ever the burden of Francis's prayers , and wishing moreover, to make his beloved Porziuncola a sanctuary where many might be saved, he begged a plenary Indulgence for all who, having confessed their sins , should visit the little chapel.
Our Lord acceded to this request on condition that the pope should ratify the Indulgence. The latter, notwithstanding some opposition from the Curia at such an unheard-of favour, granted the Indulgence , restricting it, however, to one day yearly. He subsequently fixed 2 August in perpetuity, as the day for gaining this Porziuncola Indulgence , commonly known in Italy as il perdono d'Assisi. Such is the traditional account. The fact that there is no record of this Indulgence in either the papal or diocesan archives and no allusion to it in the earliest biographies of Francis or other contemporary documents has led some writers to reject the whole story.
This argumentum ex silentio has, however, been met by M. Paul Sabatier, who in his critical edition of the "Tractatus de Indulgentia" of Fra Bartholi has adduced all the really credible evidence in its favour. But even those who regard the granting of this Indulgence as traditionally believed to be an established fact of history , admit that its early history is uncertain.
The first general chapter of the Friars Minor was held in May, , at Porziuncola , the order being divided into provinces, and an apportionment made of the Christian world into so many Franciscan missions. Tuscany , Lombardy , Provence, Spain , and Germany were assigned to five of Francis's principal followers; for himself the saint reserved France , and he actually set out for that kingdom, but on arriving at Florence , was dissuaded from going further by Cardinal Ugolino , who had been made protector of the order in He therefore sent in his stead Brother Pacificus , who in the world had been renowned as a poet, together with Brother Agnellus , who later on established the Friars Minor in England.
Although success came indeed to Francis and his friars , with it came also opposition, and it was with a view to allaying any prejudices the Curia might have imbibed against their methods that Francis, at the instance of Cardinal Ugolino , went to Rome and preached before the pope and cardinals in the Lateran. This visit to the Eternal City , which took place , was apparently the occasion of Francis's memorable meeting with St. The year Francis devoted to missionary tours in Italy , which were a continual triumph for him.
He usually preached out of doors, in the market-places, from church steps, from the walls of castle court-yards. Allured by the magic spell of his presence, admiring crowds, unused for the rest to anything like popular preaching in the vernacular, followed Francis from place to place hanging on his lips; church bells rang at his approach; processions of clergy and people advanced to meet him with music and singing ; they brought the sick to him to bless and heal, and kissed the very ground on which he trod, and even sought to cut away pieces of his tunic.
The extraordinary enthusiasm with which the saint was everywhere welcomed was equalled only by the immediate and visible result of his preaching. His exhortations of the people, for sermons they can hardly be called, short, homely, affectionate, and pathetic, touched even the hardest and most frivolous, and Francis became in sooth a very conqueror of souls. Thus it happened, on one occasion, while the saint was preaching at Camara, a small village near Assisi , that the whole congregation were so moved by his "words of spirit and life" that they presented themselves to him in a body and begged to be admitted into his order.
It was to accede, so far as might be, to like requests that Francis devised his Third Order , as it is now called, of the Brothers and Sisters of Penance, which he intended as a sort of middle state between the world and the cloister for those who could not leave their home or desert their wonted avocations in order to enter either the First Order of Friars Minor or the Second Order of Poor Ladies.
That Francis prescribed particular duties for these tertiaries is beyond question. They were not to carry arms, or take oaths , or engage in lawsuits, etc. It is also said that he drew up a formal rule for them, but it is clear that the rule, confirmed by Nicholas IV in , does not, at least in the form in which it has come down to us, represent the original rule of the Brothers and Sisters of Penance.
In any event, it is customary to assign as the year of the foundation of this third order , but the date is not certain.
At the second general chapter May, Francis, bent on realizing his project of evangelizing the infidels , assigned a separate mission to each of his foremost disciples , himself selecting the seat of war between the crusaders and the Saracens. After preaching there to the assembled Christian forces, Francis fearlessly passed over to the infidel camp, where he was taken prisoner and led before the sultan.
According to the testimony of Jacques de Vitry , who was with the crusaders at Damietta , the sultan received Francis with courtesy, but beyond obtaining a promise from this ruler of more indulgent treatment for the Christian captives, the saint's preaching seems to have effected little. Before returning to Europe , the saint is believed to have visited Palestine and there obtained for the friars the foothold they still retain as guardians of the holy places.
What is certain is that Francis was compelled to hasten back to Italy because of various troubles that had arisen there during his absence. News had reached him in the East that Matthew of Narni and Gregory of Naples, the two vicars-general whom he had left in charge of the order, had summoned a chapter which, among other innovations, sought to impose new fasts upon the friars , more severe than the rule required.
Moreover, Cardinal Ugolino had conferred on the Poor Ladies a written rule which was practically that of the Benedictine nuns , and Brother Philip, whom Francis had charged with their interests, had accepted it.
To make matters worse, John of Capella, one of the saint's first companions, had assembled a large number of lepers , both men and women , with a view to forming them into a new religious order, and had set out for Rome to seek approval for the rule he had drawn up for these unfortunates.
Apart from these difficulties, the order was then passing through a period of transition. It had become evident that the simple, familiar, and unceremonious ways which had marked the Franciscan movement at its beginning were gradually disappearing, and that the heroic poverty practiced by Francis and his companions at the outset became less easy as the friars with amazing rapidity increased in number. And this Francis could not help seeing on his return.
Cardinal Ugolino had already undertaken the task "of reconciling inspirations so unstudied and so free with an order of things they had outgrown. That Cardinal Ugolino had no small share in bringing Francis's lofty ideals "within range and compass" seems beyond dispute, and it is not difficult to recognize his hand in the important changes made in the organization of the order in the so-called Chapter of Mats. At this famous assembly, held at Porziuncola at Whitsuntide , or there is seemingly much room for doubt as to the exact date and number of the early chapters , about friars are said to have been present, besides some applicants for admission to the order.
Huts of wattle and mud afforded shelter for this multitude. Francis had purposely made no provision for them, but the charity of the neighbouring towns supplied them with food, while knights and nobles waited upon them gladly.
It was on this occasion that Francis, harassed no doubt and disheartened at the tendency betrayed by a large number of the friars to relax the rigours of the rule, according to the promptings of human prudence , and feeling, perhaps unfitted for a place which now called largely for organizing abilities, relinquished his position as general of the order in favour of Peter of Cattaneo. But the latter died in less than a year, being succeeded as vicar-general by the unhappy Brother Elias , who continued in that office until the death of Francis.
The saint , meanwhile, during the few years that remained in him, sought to impress on the friars by the silent teaching of personal example of what sort he would fain have them to be.
Already, while passing through Bologna on his return from the East, Francis had refused to enter the convent there because he had heard it called the "House of the Friars" and because a studium had been instituted there. He moreover bade all the friars , even those who were ill, quit it at once, and it was only some time after, when Cardinal Ugolino had publicly declared the house to be his own property , that Francis suffered his brethren to re-enter it.
Yet strong and definite as the saint's convictions were, and determinedly as his line was taken, he was never a slave to a theory in regard to the observances of poverty or anything else; about him indeed, there was nothing narrow or fanatical. As for his attitude towards study, Francis desiderated for his friars only such theological knowledge as was conformable to the mission of the order, which was before all else a mission of example. Hence he regarded the accumulation of books as being at variance with the poverty his friars professed, and he resisted the eager desire for mere book-learning, so prevalent in his time , in so far as it struck at the roots of that simplicity which entered so largely into the essence of his life and ideal and threatened to stifle the spirit of prayer , which he accounted preferable to all the rest.
In , so some writers tell us, Francis drew up a new rule for the Friars Minor. Others regard this so-called Rule of not as a new rule, but as the first one which Innocent had orally approved; not, indeed, its original form, which we do not possess, but with such additions and modifications as it has suffered during the course of twelve years. However this may be, the composition called by some the Rule of is very unlike any conventional rule ever made.
It was too lengthy and unprecise to become a formal rule, and two years later Francis retired to Fonte Colombo, a hermitage near Rieti , and rewrote the rule in more compendious form.
This revised draft he entrusted to Brother Elias , who not long after declared he had lost it through negligence. Francis thereupon returned to the solitude of Fonte Colombo, and recast the rule on the same lines as before, its twenty-three chapters being reduced to twelve and some of its precepts being modified in certain details at the instance of Cardinal Ugolino.
It is based on the three vows of obedience , poverty , and chastity , special stress however being laid on poverty , which Francis sought to make the special characteristic of his order, and which became the sign to be contradicted.
This vow of absolute poverty in the first and second orders and the reconciliation of the religious with the secular state in the Third Order of Penance are the chief novelties introduced by Francis in monastic regulation. It was during Christmastide of this year that the saint conceived the idea of celebrating the Nativity "in a new manner", by reproducing in a church at Greccio the praesepio of Bethlehem , and he has thus come to be regarded as having inaugurated the popular devotion of the Crib.
Christmas appears indeed to have been the favourite feast of Francis, and he wished to persuade the emperor to make a special law that men should then provide well for the birds and the beasts, as well as for the poor , so that all might have occasion to rejoice in the Lord. Early in August, , Francis retired with three companions to "that rugged rock 'twixt Tiber and Arno", as Dante called La Verna , there to keep a forty days fast in preparation for Michaelmas.
During this retreat the sufferings of Christ became more than ever the burden of his meditations ; into few souls , perhaps, had the full meaning of the Passion so deeply entered.
It was on or about the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross 14 September while praying on the mountainside, that he beheld the marvellous vision of the seraph , as a sequel of which there appeared on his body the visible marks of the five wounds of the Crucified which, says an early writer, had long since been impressed upon his heart. Brother Leo , who was with St. Francis when he received the stigmata , has left us in his note to the saint's autograph blessing , preserved at Assisi , a clear and simple account of the miracle , which for the rest is better attested than many another historical fact.
The saint's right side is described as bearing on open wound which looked as if made by a lance, while through his hands and feet were black nails of flesh, the points of which were bent backward.
0コメント