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Francis and the Dark Night of Creation: A meditation on foolishness and discernment in St Francis of Assisi
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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In some ways we ‘know’ so little about Francis. We have many legends and accounts of his life, some written by those who were closest to him, some collated from earlier accounts by the Order as it grew in the century after his death. However, all of these chroniclers and interpreters shared one thing, they did not write as would an academic historian of today: they wrote to explain their devotion, to explain why one man should have had such a devastating and transforming affect on the religious life of his day. We can neither ignore these accounts because they do not fit the criteria that we demand of ‘history’ , nor unthinkingly accept them as a ‘scientific’ biography. We are called always to interpret.
We know that Francis underwent a conversion and gave up a wealthy life to become one of the poorest of the poor. We know that gradually there gathered around him a body of followers who formed themselves under his guidance into a Brotherhood, and were eventually transformed into the more organised structure of an Order. He travelled far from his base in Assisi, from France to the Middle East, but always returned. Francis continually struggled to resist the urge to become anything but one of the poor, always fighting the acquisition of houses, possessions, learning, or any self-conceit. Eventually he gave up control of his Order to people with a different vision of their mission, preferring to become just another brother to fighting for control as the head of a large and expanding organisation. Two years before his early death he received the stigmata on the feast of the Holy Cross. His standing when he died in 1226, the victim of a life of fasting and near continual illness, was as great as it had ever been.
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- Copyright © 1990 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
Footnotes
1
I would like to acknowledge a special debt to Fr. R. Dodaro O.S.A., who forced upon me many necessary corrections in the writing of this paper.
References
2 Born c. 1181–2, died Oct. 3rd 1226. For a comprehensive account of his life see Fortini, A. Francis of Assist, tr. H. Moak, New York, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1981. For a shorter and reasonably accurate biography see Green, J. God's Fool: The Life and Times of Francis of Assisi, tr. P. Heinegg, San Francisco, 1985. For an interpretation, or rather a novel, owing more to the legends and to the strengths of one man's imagination, but for all its inaccuracy deep and powerful, see God's Pauper: St Francis of Assisi, Kazantzakis, Nikos, tr. P.A. Bien, London, Faber, 1975Google Scholar.
3 Pouring out a thousand graces he passed these groves in haste and having looked at them with his image alone, clothed them in beauty. St John of the Cross Canticle, Stanza 5.
4 During the process of his conversion in 1205 he visited the ancient and dilapidated church of San Damiano near Assisi and there heard a voice from a crucifix which said ‘Francis, repair my house’. He returned and repaired the church with his own hands. Because of this initiative the people of Assisi christened him ‘Pazzo’, the Madman. La Portiuncula was a small shrine to our Lady of the Angels in the woods near Assisi which he began to repair in 1207, and which became the home of his Order in 1210.
5 In 1213 Orlando da Chiusi gave Mt Alverna in Tuscany to Francis and his companions as a retreat. In 1224 Francis went there after attending his last Chapter of the Order, and after learning of the dream of Brother Elias (the brother who became head of the Order in 1221) that Francis would die within two years. According to tradition, on September 14, the Feast of the Holy Cross, an angel with wings of fire descended on him as he was praying and gave him the stigmata.
6 Referring either to the continual temptation in Francis to assume some property, or to allow the Brothers to do so, or specifically the conflict within Francis towards the end of his life, when he was torn between obeying the new rules allowing property ‘in common’, and following his own inner command.
7 ‘Below the level of consciousness we know that our pain is the effect of God's closeness.’ Ruth Burrows, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer, London, Sheed and Ward 1977, p. 101, see esp. ch. 4.
8 Speculum perfectionis, 118 in The Little Flowers, Legends and Lauds. St Francis of Assisi, ed. Karrer, O., tr. Wydenbruck, N., London, Sheed and Ward, 1979, p. 129Google Scholar. For a short study of the various sources of Francis's life see Moorman, J.R.H., The Sources for the Life of St. Francis of Assisi, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1940Google Scholar.
9 Brother Leo joined Francis in 1210 and was his constant companion and secretary during the last years of his life. He left many writings about Francis which did not toe the official line of the Order in the thirteenth century, and were thought to have been lost until their gradual emergence during the second half of the last century, and through the course of the twentieth. He died at Assisi in 1271.
10 Fioretti, I, VIII; tr. Wydenbruck, op. cit. pp. 185–6.
11 Fioretti, I, VII; tr. Wydenbruck, op. cit. pp. 183–4.
12 During the course of his conversion he obeyed a sudden urge to kiss a leper he met in his path, a great struggle for Francis, who had been so squeamish. As Green (op. cit. p. 74) says, the leper appears ‘as if stepping out of one of the oldest stories in the Bible.’
13 von Balthasar, H.U., The Glory of the Lord, T., Edinburgh and Clark, T., 1983. Vol. 1, p. 362–4Google Scholar.
14 See Sorrell, R.D., St Francis of Assisi and Nature, Oxford, OUP 1988Google Scholar, chs. 3–4.
15 Vanstone, W.H., The Stature of Waiting, London, DLT 1982, esp. chs. 6–7Google Scholar.
16 I Celano, I, 29; tr. Wydenbruck, op. cit. p. 43.
17 The most famous occurrence of this took place in 1215 near Spoleto.
18 Venantius Fortunatus, Ad Rucconem diaconem, modo presbyterum, tr. Waddell, H., Medieval Latin Lyrics, London, Constable 1975, p. 63Google Scholar.
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