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—St. Francis, last words, according to Thomas of Celano
Francis lived with a deep awareness that death will not have the last say. He hoped for a new life, a different life. And his heirs did not stop at the description of his death either. After recounting those last moments, Celano went on to describe how Francis was laid to rest. Not surprisingly, Francis had outlined his wish that he should be buried in the Portiuncula, but this wish was to go unfulfilled. With the worry that conflict with Perugia could lead to his body being stolen, it was decided to entomb him safely within the city walls of Assisi, so he was buried in the church of San Giorgio, “where he had first learned his letters and where he later first began to preach.” The massive church dedicated to his memory that today stands over his grave had not been built when he died. In 1230, his bones were secretly removed from the Portiuncula and brought up the hill to be reinterred. They remained hidden until 1818 when efforts were made to locate his sarcophagus.
But even by the time his mortal remains were transferred to the church that now sits so majestically over his grave, Francis had already been canonized as a saint, which Celano includes in his Life. On July 16, 1228, Gregory IX could complete—not long after the beginning of his pontificate—what he had set in motion while he was still Cardinal Hugolino. Francis, whom he had protected, was now a saint, offering his protection to the pope. Yet the pope also made sure that the power that emanated from the saint did not grow excessive. In the bull Quo elongati, he set boundaries on the saint’s influence, though they were essentially in vain, for a hundred years after his death Franciscans were still engaged in debate over the role of poverty in the life of the order. It is easy to see how difficult it was to pin Francis down.
He was to be a saint, but that meant for some a heretic or, in contemporary language, a rebel. There are so many concrete pictures that make Francis approachable, but in the end we are still trying to grasp the wind. Compliant follower of the pope, prophet of the council, determined preacher of judgment—they are all Francis too. It is just not possible to reconcile the tender poet of The Canticle of Brother Sun with the man who damned those who believed wrongly about the Lord’s Supper. The fragmentary evidence that we have is not easily knit together to create a picture of the whole.
Of course, there are many elements in the story that we readily recognize. The conflict with his father and his turn to the church are basic building blocks of Francis’s life. Rupture with his family came before his positive decision to pursue something different. Francis’s path can largely be understood in terms of generational conflict, which in his case was also social conflict, because his father’s attitudes magnified the concerns about wealth and money in his own age. The growing protest with his father was, however, not transferred into protest against the church. Francis stood on the periphery of, perhaps even outside, the civic community of his day, whereas he advanced toward the center of the church. His alliance with the papacy was not an accidental outcome of his life choices—instead, it was the most consistent consequence of them. And it was this very tension that marked out his historic setting. He held up a mirror to the society of his time with particular intensity, and he saw clearly how the church could hold up a mirror to it as well. He was deeply embedded in his age, both in rejection and integration, yet he stood over it too insofar as he preached repentance, not drawing attention to analysis of the economy. His service focused on individual human beings who were prone to lose out through the workings of the thirteenth-century economy—and this has ready application to the twenty-first-century economy too.
However, any analysis falls short if we do not take into account another theme of his life, his spontaneity, which shaped him profoundly at the beginning but was still in evidence at the end. In his attempts to let his deeds and not just his words do the talking, his spontaneity led the way to his life’s conclusion. Francis was not the kind of person who imagined the future conceptually or from first principles; instead, he needed advisers again and again to help him direct his spontaneous outbursts into productive paths, from rupture to rebuilding. The priest in San Damiano before whom he had thrown down the money was perhaps the first of his counselors. Bishop Guido followed after that, then the priest at the Portiuncula who explained to him Christ’s commissioning sermon, then Bernhard, Hugolino, the ministers-general . . . The list of names of those he depended on to help him find clarity was long.
Of course, we might reproach them for their self-interested advice, which shaped or perhaps misshaped Francis, thinking of the frustrations of the last years of his life. But in the end, they contributed significantly to his life by giving his ministry shape and longevity. Francis began a movement that in the end he was not able to control. As the brotherhood grew increasingly large, he lost the capacity and indeed the appetite to continue to lead it. Instead he chose solitude and gave up leadership, although he could not really release himself from involvement. This is perhaps the most problematic characteristic of his life, making the job of his counselors so difficult. His desire for autonomy is covered up in the hagiographies when they explain this tendency in terms of competition with the ministers-general or by outlining his dependence on others, both of which suggest the limits of his influence. Behind these caricatures we glimpse a man who was more shaped by what he received than what he gave.
Above all, he wanted to receive from someone in particular. He knew his life was led by God, both in the good and despite the bad. His repentance was an expression of the demands of God on his life, and the greeting of peace represented the demand to live an apostolic life, or to live according to an apostolic rule. His was a life that pointed away from himself to Christ, while at the same time he strove to honor Christ’s active presence in this world, not wanting to forget the importance of resisting the devil’s ever-present wiles. The presence of Christ found its climax in the Christmas celebration at Greccio, and for others more than for him in the experience of the stigmata. It is here that the most profound meaning of his life is to be understood.
Whoever wanted to say something about the externals of his life ended up describing him as unprepossessing or even repulsive. But it was in exactly this way that he was happy to be the bearer of the divine message. This was itself an expression of the incarnation, which was so important to him. God, who took flesh in this world, takes the lowliest up into his service. This was the way Francis understood and presented himself. But this does not relieve us of the tensions he experienced, for through these means he asserted his highest authority right up until the very last words he wrote down.
This is how the fragments we have present the man. They don’t always provide a complete picture. But we wouldn’t expect less of a man whose personality prized spontaneity. And anyway, flat personalities are not always the most interesting ones. Through the individual pieces we sense the charisma that drew others in but that never allowed their bearer to find real peace. Fragments remain, the fragments of a life. In the distance we meet a man who was seeking but never found his purpose in life fulfilled. And a man who simply will not let us grasp him either.
EDITORIAL NOTE: This essay is an excerpt taken from Francis of Assisi: The Life of a Restless Saint by Volker Leppin, translated by Rhys S. Bezzant, published by Yale University Press in January 2025. Reproduced by permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Seeking the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary through prayer