Since his abrupt return from Spoleto, life in his father’s house had daily become more difficult. Bernardone’s self-love had received from his son’s embarrassment such a wound as with common people is never healed. He might provide, without counting it, money to be swallowed up in dissipation so that his son might stand on an equal footing with the young nobles. But he could never resign himself to see him giving with lavish hands to every beggar in the streets.
Francis, continually plunged in reverie and spending his days in lonely wanderings in the fields, was no longer of the least use to his father. Months passed and the distance between the two men grew ever wider, and the gentle and loving Pica could do nothing to prevent a rupture that from this time appeared to be inevitable. Francis soon came to feel only one desire—to flee from the abode where, in the place of love, he found only reproaches, upbraidings, anguish.
The faithful confidant of his earlier struggles had been obliged to leave him, and this absolute solitude weighed heavily upon Francis’s warm and loving heart. He did what he could to escape it, but no one understood him. The ideas that he was beginning timidly to express evoked from those to whom he spoke only mocking smiles or the head-shakings that people sure they are right bestow upon one who is marching straight to madness. He even went to open his mind to the bishop, but the latter understood no more than others his vague, incoherent plans, filled with ideas impossible to realize and possibly subversive.
Among the numerous chapels in the suburbs of Assisi there was one that he particularly loved, that of San Damiano. It was reached by a few minutes walk over a stony path, almost trackless, under olive trees, amid odors of lavender and rosemary. Standing on the top of a hillock, one can see the entire plain through a curtain of cypresses and pines that seem to be trying to hide the humble hermitage and set up an ideal barrier between it and the world.
Served by a poor priest who had scarcely the wherewithal for necessary food, the sanctuary was falling into ruin. There was nothing in the interior but a simple altar of masonry, and on a reredos one of those Byzantine crucifixes still so numerous in Italy, where through the work of the artists of the time has come down to us something of the terrors that agitated the twelfth century. In general, the Crucified One, frightfully lacerated, with bleeding wounds, appears to seek to inspire only grief and compunction; that of San Damiano, on the contrary, has an expression of inexpressible calm and gentleness. Instead of closing the eyelids in eternal surrender to the weight of suffering, it looks down in self-forgetfulness, and its pure, clear gaze says, not “I suffer,” but, “Come unto me.”
The crucifix of San Damiano, so important in the life of Francis, was taken to the Chapel of San Giorgio by the Sisters of St. Clare after Clare’s death. They took it with them when they relocated to San Giorgio, leaving behind the more remote San Damiano. The eyes of the crucifix are specifically mentioned by Sabatier and the earlier biographers. This reminds us of a painter of icons who always leaves the eyes for last, as the eyes are the most important feature—the primary opening into the figure represented.
One day Francis was praying before the poor altar: “Great and glorious God, and you, Lord Jesus, I pray you, shed abroad your light in the darkness of my mind. . . . Be found in me, Lord, so that in all things I may act only in accordance with your holy will.”
Thus he prayed in his heart, and behold, little by little it seemed to him that his gaze could not detach itself from that of Jesus. He felt something marvelous taking place in and around him. The sacred victim took on life, and in the outward silence he was aware of a voice that softly stole into the very depths of his heart, speaking to him an ineffable language. Jesus accepted his oblation. Jesus desired his labor, his life, all his being, and the heart of the poor solitary was already bathed in light and strength.
This vision marks the final triumph of Francis. His union with Christ was consummated. From this time he could exclaim with the mystics of every age, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” For the first time, no doubt, Francis had been brought into direct, personal, intimate contact with Jesus Christ.
This look of love cast upon the crucifix, this mysterious colloquy with the compassionate victim, was never to cease. At San Damiano, St. Francis’s piety took on its outward appearance and its originality. From that time his way was plain before him. Coming out from the sanctuary, he gave the priest all the money he had about him to keep a lamp always burning, and with ravished heart he returned to Assisi. He had decided to leave his father’s house and undertake the restoration of the chapel, after having broken the last ties that bound him to the past. A horse and a few pieces of brightly colored cloths were all that he possessed. Arriving at home he made a packet of the cloths, and mounting his horse he set out for Foligno. This city was then as now the most important commercial town of all the region. Its fairs attracted the whole population of Umbria and the Sabines. Bernardone had often taken his son there, and Francis speedily succeeded in selling all he had brought. He even parted with his horse, and full of joy set out upon the road to Assisi.
Historian G. G. Coulton is critical of Sabatier’s account of this famous scene. Coulton refers to Francis’s as a “pious theft.” He writes: “It is very difficult to understand how, in the face of the early biographers, so admirable a writer as M. Sabatier can speak of the Foligno incident as though the horse and cloth had really been the Saint’s own” (COULTON 2, p. 31).
This is the story of the prodigal son turned on its head! In the parable, the son wastes his inheritance in dissipation; Francis has taken the first decisive step toward renouncing his worldly goods. In both the parable and in Francis’s life, the son leaves his father only to return to him, begging forgiveness and finding grace. The difference of course, in Francis’s case, is that he was acting in obedience to his heavenly Father.
This act was to him most important; it marked his final rupture with the past. From this day on his life was to be in all points the opposite of what it had been. The Crucified had given himself to him; he on his side had given himself to the Crucified without reserve or return. To uncertainty, disquietude of soul, anguish, longing for an unknown good, bitter regrets, had succeeded a delicious calm, the ecstasy of the lost child who finds his mother and forgets in a moment the torture of his heart.
From Foligno he returned directly to San Damiano; it was not necessary to pass through the city, and he was in haste to put his projects into execution. The poor priest was surprised enough when Francis handed over to him the whole product of his sale. He doubtless thought that a passing quarrel had occurred between Bernardone and his son, and for greater prudence refused the gift. But Francis so insisted upon remaining with him that he finally gave him leave to do so. As to the money, now become useless, Francis cast it as a worthless object upon a window-seat in the chapel.
Meanwhile Bernardone, disturbed by his son’s failure to return, sought for him in all quarters, and was not long in learning of his presence at San Damiano. In a moment he perceived that Francis was lost to him. Resolved to try every means, he collected a few neighbors, and furious with rage hastened to the hermitage to snatch him away, if necessary, by force.
But Francis knew his father’s violence. When he heard the shouts of those who were in pursuit of him he felt his courage fail and hurried to a hiding-place that he had prepared for himself for precisely such an emergency. Bernardone ransacked every corner, but was obliged at last to return to Assisi without his son. Francis remained hidden for long days, weeping and groaning, imploring God to show him the path he ought to follow. Notwithstanding his fears he had an infinite joy at heart, and at no price would he have turned back.
This seclusion could not last long. Francis perceived this and told himself that for a newly made knight of Christ he was cutting a very pitiful figure. Arming himself, therefore, with courage, he went one day to the city to present himself before his father and make known to him his resolution. It is easy to imagine the changes wrought in his appearance by these few weeks of seclusion, much of them passed in mental anguish. When he appeared, pale, cadaverous, his clothes in tatters, upon what is now the Piazza Nuova, where hundreds of children play all day long, he was greeted with a great shout, “Pazzo, Pazzo!” (“A madman! A madman!”) “Un pazzo ne fa cento” (“One madman makes a hundred more”), says the proverb, but one must have seen the delirious excitement of the street children of Italy at the sight of a madman to gain an idea how true it is. The moment the magic cry resounds they rush into the street with frightful din, and while their parents look on from the windows, they surround the unhappy sufferer with wild dances mingled with songs, shouts, and savage howls. They throw stones at him, fling mud upon him, blindfold him; if he flies into a rage, they double their insults; if he weeps or begs for pity, they repeat his cries and mimic his sobs and supplications without respite and without mercy.
Bernardone soon heard the clamor that filled the narrow streets and went out to enjoy the show. Suddenly, he thought he heard his own name and that of his son, and bursting with shame and rage he perceived Francis. Throwing himself upon him, as if to throttle him, he dragged him into the house and cast him, half dead, into a dark closet. Everything was brought to bear to change the prisoner’s resolve, but all in vain. At last, wearied out and desperate, Bernardone left him in peace, though not without having firmly bound him.
A few days later he was obliged to be absent for a short time. Pica, his wife, understood only too well his grievances against Francis, but feeling that violence would be of no avail she resolved to try gentleness. It was all in vain. Then, no longer able to see him tortured in this way, she set him free. Francis returned straight to San Damiano.
Francis demonstrated a taste for holy foolishness throughout his life. No doubt his growing spiritual confidence took some measure of pleasure in being ridiculed by the townspeople as he returned to Assisi. Only a few years later, Francis and Brother Rufino preached in Assisi wearing only their underwear. According to another story, when Brother Bernard was sent by Francis to nearby Bologna, Bernard too was set upon by the children of that city. Bernard, probably as Francis had taught him, bore it all with visible joy and even made his way further—to the marketplace—so that the impact of his physical appearance of foolishness would be even greater. Adults joined the children in throwing dust and stones at him, pushing him, and plucking at the hood of his tattered tunic. The story tells that Bernard returned day after day to the marketplace for the same treatment. Finally, someone from the crowd asked him where his great patience and holiness arose from, and Bernard pulled out a copy of Francis’s Rule. That is how, according to legend, Bologna and many other towns became the home of early Franciscans.
Bernardone, on his return, went so far as to strike Pica in punishment for her weakness. Then, unable to tolerate the thought of seeing his son the jest of the whole city, he tried to procure his expulsion from the territory of Assisi. Going to San Damiano he summoned him to leave the country. This time Francis did not try to hide. Boldly presenting himself, he declared that not only would nothing induce him to abandon his resolutions, but moreover, having become the servant of Christ, he had no longer to receive orders from his father. As Bernardone launched out into invective, reproaching him with the enormous sums that he had cost him, Francis showed him by a gesture the money that he had brought back from the sale at Foligno lying on the window-ledge. The father greedily seized it and went away, resolving to appeal to the magistrates. Bernardone could do no more than disinherit his son, or at least induce him of his own accord to renounce all claim upon his inheritance.
When called upon to appear before the episcopal tribunal Francis experienced a lively joy. His mystical espousals to the Crucified One were now to receive a sort of official consecration. To this Jesus, whom he had so often blasphemed and betrayed by word and conduct, he would now be able with equal publicity to promise obedience and fidelity.
It is easy to imagine the sensation that all this caused in a small town like Assisi, and the crowd that on the appointed day pressed toward the Piazza of Santa Maria Maggiore, where the bishop pronounced sentence. Everyone held Francis to be assuredly mad, but they anticipated with relish the shame and rage of Bernardone, whom everyone detested, and whose pride was so well punished by all of this.
The bishop first set forth the case, and advised Francis to simply give up all his property. To the great surprise of the crowd the latter, instead of replying, retired to a room in the bishop’s palace, and immediately reappeared absolutely naked, holding in his hand the packet into which he had rolled his clothes; these he laid down before the bishop with the little money that he still had kept, saying, “Listen, all of you, and understand it well. Until this time I have called Peter Bernardone my father, but now I desire to serve God. This is why I return to him this money, for which he has given himself so much trouble, as well as my clothing, and all that I have had from him, for from henceforth I desire to say nothing else than ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’”
A long murmur arose from the crowd when Bernardone was seen to gather up and carry off the clothing without the least evidence of compassion, while the bishop was obliged to take under his mantle the poor Francis, who was trembling with emotion and cold.
The scene of the judgment hall made an immense impression. The ardor, simplicity, and indignation of Francis had been so profound and sincere that scoffers were disconcerted. On that day he won for himself a secret sympathy in many souls. The incident is simply a new manifestation of Francis’s character, with its ingenuousness, its exaggerations, its longing to establish a complete harmony, a literal correspondence, between words and actions.
Other biographers recount that Francis was wearing one garment underneath his father’s expensive clothes—significantly—“a hair shirt next to his skin” according to The Legend of the Three Companions, representing an ascetic’s devotion to God (THREE, p. 80). On the contrary, Giotto’s famous fresco painting on the north wall of the upper church in the Basilica di San Francesco depicts a naked Francis under the bishop’s robe. Either way, “Francis was a master of dramatic gestures and visual tableaux, and, unsurprisingly, representations of these played an important part in his cult” (HOLMES, p. 55). Chesterton adds, he “was one of the founders of the mediaeval drama” (CHESTERTON, p. 78).
After emotions such as he had just experienced he felt the need of being alone, of realizing his joy, of singing the liberty he had finally achieved along all the lines where once he had so deeply suffered, so ardently struggled. Leaving the city by the nearest gate, he plunged into the deserted paths that climb the sides of Mount Subasio.
It was the early spring. Here and there were still great drifts of snow, but under the ardor of the March sun winter seemed to own itself vanquished. In the midst of this mysterious and bewildering harmony the heart of Francis felt a delicious thrill; all his being was calmed and uplifted; the soul of things caressed him gently and shed upon him peace. An unaccustomed happiness swept over him and he made the forest resound with his hymns of praise.
So Francis went on his way, deeply inhaling the odors of spring, singing at the top of his voice one of those songs of French chivalry that he had learned in days gone by. The forest in which he was walking was the usual retreat of such people of Assisi and its environs as had reason for hiding. Some ruffians, aroused by his voice, suddenly fell upon him. “Who are you?” they asked. “I am the herald of the great King,” he answered, “but what is that to you?”
His only garment was an old mantle that the bishop’s gardener had lent him at his master’s request. They stripped it from him, and throwing him into a ditch full of snow they said, “There is your place, poor herald of God.”
The robbers gone, he shook off the snow that covered him, and after many efforts succeeded in extricating himself from the ditch. Stiff with cold, with no other covering than a worn-out shirt, he none the less resumed his singing, happy to suffer and thus to accustom himself the better to understand the words of the Crucified One.
“He went out half-naked. . .a man without a father. He was penniless, he was parentless, he was to all appearances without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world; and as he went under the frosty trees, he burst suddenly into song” (CHESTERTON, p. 66).
He directed his steps toward Gubbio, where he knew that he would find a friend. Perhaps this was he who had been his confidant on his return from Spoleto. Whoever it was, he received from him a tunic, and a few days later set out to return to his dear San Damiano. After having fashioned for himself a hermit’s dress, he began to go into the squares and open places of the city. Having sung a few hymns there, he would announce to those who gathered around him his project of restoring the chapel.
Many deemed him mad, but others were deeply moved by the remembrance of the past. As for Francis, deaf to mockery, he spared himself no labor, carrying upon his shoulders, so ill-fitted for severe toil, the stones that were given him. During this time the poor priest of San Damiano felt his heart swelling with love for this companion who had at first caused him such embarrassment, and he strove to prepare for him his favorite dishes. Francis soon perceived it and his delicacy took alarm at the expense that he caused his friend. Thanking him, he resolved to beg his food from door to door.
It was not an easy task. Each hour, so to speak, brought to him a new struggle. One day he was going through the town begging for oil for the lamps of San Damiano, when he arrived at a house where a banquet was going on. A great number of his former companions were there, singing and dancing. At the sound of those well-known voices he felt as if he could not enter; he even turned away, but very soon, filled with confusion by his own cowardice, he returned quickly upon his steps, made his way into the banquet-hall, and after confessing his shame, put so much earnestness and fire into his request that everyone desired to cooperate in this pious work.
His bitterest trial however was his father’s anger, which remained as violent as ever. Although he had renounced Francis, Bernardone’s pride suffered none the less at seeing his mode of life, and whenever he met his son he overwhelmed him with reproaches. The tender heart of Francis was so wrung with sorrow that he resorted to a sort of stratagem for charming away the spell of the paternal imprecations. “Come with me,” he said to a beggar, “be to me as a father, and I will give you a part of the alms that I receive. When you see Bernardone curse me, if I say, ‘Bless me, my father,’ you must sign me with the cross and bless me in his stead.”
In the spring of 1208 he finished the restoration of San Damiano. He had been aided by many people of good will, setting the example of work and above all of joy, cheering everybody by his songs and his projects for the future. He spoke with such enthusiasm and contagious warmth of the transformation of his dear chapel, of the grace that God would accord to those who would come there to pray, that later on it was believed that he had spoken of Clare and her holy maidens who were to retire to this place four years later.
This success soon inspired him with the idea of repairing the other sanctuaries in the suburbs of Assisi. Those that had struck him by their state of decay were St. Peter and St. Mary, of the Portiuncula, also called Santa Maria degli Angeli. The former is not otherwise mentioned in his biographies. As to the second, it was to become the true cradle of the Franciscan movement.
This chapel, still standing at the present day after escaping revolutions and earthquakes, is a true Bethel, one of those rare spots in the world on which rests the mystic ladder that joins heaven to earth. There were dreamed some of the noblest dreams that have soothed the pains of humanity. It is not to Assisi in its marvelous basilica that one must go to divine and comprehend St. Francis; one must turn toward Santa Maria degli Angeli at the hours when the stated prayers cease, at the moment when the evening shadows lengthen, when all the fripperies of worship disappear in the obscurity, when all the countryside seems to collect itself to listen to the chime of the distant church bells. Doubtless it was Francis’s plan to settle there as a hermit. He dreamed of passing his life there in meditation and silence, keeping up the little church and from time to time inviting a priest there to say mass. Nothing as yet suggested to him that he was in the end to become a religious founder. One of the most interesting aspects of his life is in fact the continual development revealing itself to him. There is hardly anyone, except St. Paul, in whom is found to the same degree the devouring need of being always something more, always something better, and it is so beautiful in both of them only because it is absolutely instinctive.
When he began to restore the Portiuncula his projects hardly went beyond a very narrow horizon. He was preparing himself for a life of penitence rather than a life of activity. But once these works were finished it was impossible that this somewhat selfish and passive manner of achieving his own salvation should satisfy him long. When the repairs were finished meditation occupied the greater part of his days. A Benedictine of the Abbey of Mont Subasio came from time to time to say mass at Santa Maria; these were the bright hours of St. Francis’s life. One can imagine with what pious care he prepared himself and with what faith he listened to the divine teachings.
The Portiuncula (lit. “little portion”) included the little chapel and land surrounding it—also known as the Church of Our Lady of the Angels (Santa Maria degli Angeli), or simply the church of Saint Mary, located approximately two miles from Assisi, in the plain below the city, near the road that travelers would take to Foligno in one direction, Perugia in the other. In his final days, Francis insisted that his brothers carry his dying body back to his beloved chapel, Portiuncula. (See one early eighteenth-century artist’s rendering of Portiuncula below, on p. 165.)
One day—it was probably February 24, 1209—the festival of St. Matthias mass was being celebrated at the Portiuncula. When the priest turned toward him to read the words of Jesus, Francis felt himself overpowered with a profound agitation. He no longer saw the priest; it was Jesus, the Crucified One of San Damiano, who was speaking: “As you go, proclaim the good news, the kingdom of heaven has come near. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food.” These words burst upon him like a revelation, like the answer of Heaven to his sighs and anxieties.
As will become clear over the next four chapters, Francis had an almost inexplicable magnetism. Even though he was known to occasionally speak in forbidding language, as Jesus sometimes did in the Gospels, and he asked seemingly impossible things of his followers, as Jesus also did, thousands of people joined Francis in his “new” apostolic work within the first few years. This wasn’t strategized or planned. As one recent biographer has put it: “Francis seemed to have none of the qualities usually found in a leader, religious or otherwise. . . . Francis founded his movement in spite of himself. Whether the brotherhood should grow or not seems never to have crossed his mind.” (THOMSON, p. 35). What, then, can explain the explosion of the early Franciscan movement other than that it was Spirit-driven?
“This is what I want,” he cried, “this is what I was seeking. From this day forth I shall set myself with all my strength to put it in practice.” Immediately throwing aside his stick, his scrip, his purse, his shoes, he determined immediately to obey, observing to the letter the precepts of the apostolic life.