The Secrets of Italy

by Corrado Augias

  So he came from a rich family and had a wealthy upbringing, with all the leisures that his given time period, companions, and local places had to offer. In his twenties he took part in the war between the Guelphs of Assisi (loyal to the papacy) and the Ghibellines of Perugia. He was not much of a warrior, and was quickly captured and imprisoned in the enemy city. Might this period of imprisonment—his first exposure to loneliness, starvation, darkness, and the discomfort of a cell—be what sparked his radical shift? Many of his biographers (it is probably more accurate to call them hagiographers) have written as much. In truth, we have no way of knowing. We know almost nothing about his early years, at least nothing of any historical reliability.

  Francis is one of the tiny minority of Italians who managed to direct their entire lives toward the affirmation of a principle, if you will, an ideal. Even during his lifetime he had been called a madman, a fanatic; it is possible that he suffered from anorexia and hysterical attacks, but even those are not enough to explain the ideals that so deeply pervaded him. Ultimately, he is an example of how consistency and conviction can shape a man’s entire existence. Francis’s life harbors a secret, and that secret is his very life.

  When the war ended in 1203 he was twenty-one years old. He had been in prison for about a year, and had been released after his father had paid an adequate ransom. His health had always been fragile, and imprisonment certainly had not helped. He spent a period of convalescence in the family estate, surrounded by Umbria’s restorative greenery, as sweet back then as it is today. Thomas of Celano, one of what I like to call his “mythographers,” described his early years before conversion:

  This is the wretched early training in which that man whom we today venerate as a saint—for he truly is a saint—passed his time from early childhood and miserably wasted and squandered his time almost up to the twenty-fifth year of his life. Maliciously advancing beyond all of his peers in vanities, he proved himself a more excessive inciter of evil and a zealous imitator of foolishness. He was an object of admiration to all, and he endeavored to surpass others in his flamboyant display of vain accomplishments: wit, curiosity, practical jokes and foolish talk, songs, and soft and flowing garments. Since he was very rich, he was not greedy but extravagant, not a hoarder of money but a squanderer of his property, a prudent dealer but a most unreliable steward. He was, nevertheless, a rather kindly person, adaptable and quite affable, even though it made him look foolish. For this reason more than for anything else, many went over to him, partisans of evil and inciters of crime. Thus with his crowded procession of misfits he used to strut about impressively and in high spirits, making his way through the streets of Babylon.1

  Whether it was the result of his exposure to the horrors of war, or from meditation during his convalescence, or from his prolonged contact with nature, or perhaps, as Thomas of Celano asserts, that the hand of the Lord touched and transformed him, the fact is that his previous behavior—that of a financially and emotionally rich young man—suddenly changed. Within a few months the formerly reckless, arrogant young man became Francis—the man the Church later beatified a mere two years after his death. A reversal of this kind could not happen overnight, nor in a peaceful manner. His father was the first to worry about it. He wanted, like any loving father, for his son to carry on the lucrative family business, hewing to the prescribed customs of the time for a young man of his status. For example, Francis had wanted to join Walter of Brienne’s military expedition. His father had no objections, since such military service was a normal addition to the résumé of any young man from the wealthy merchant classes. His departure, dressed in lavish armor, was duly celebrated.

  In fact, Francis barely made it to Spoleto, a mere thirty miles away, where he fell ill and had to turn back, now intent on changing his life path. This was bad news for the family, and Francis’s sudden, inglorious return was a source of shame. Soon thereafter he began avoiding his father, and was simultaneously burdened and enlightened by a series of new intentions he kept absolutely secret, as his family would have considered them mere whims. There were disagreements and a few violent arguments, whereupon Francis ran off and hid in a cave for over a month. When he returned to Assisi he was shaken, ragged, and pale as a corpse, so passersby began throwing stones and fistfuls of dirt at him, mocking him and calling him crazy. His father was shocked, dragged him home, and locked him up in a secret room, bound by chains so he could not flee. But somehow he did escape, likely with the help of his mother, and took refuge with a friend of his who was a priest at San Damiano, a church on the outskirts of the city.

  At this point Francis’s father had to give up the fight; his son was clearly lost, cut off from the family and the world, or his world, at least. And so he denounced his own son to the bishop, who instigated a trial of sorts. When Francis appeared before the judges, he was ordered to turn over all the money he had to his father. They went on to assert that it was against God’s will for him to spend his father’s earnings in support of the Church.

  And now we come to the famous scene, repeated and commented upon countless times, first illustrated around 1306 by Giotto in a series of frescoes adorning Assisi’s main basilica. Francis turned over not just the cash, but everything: every last object, every article of clothing down to his britches, and he topped it all off with the little bundle of money.

  According to Thomas of Celano:

  When he was in front of the bishop, he neither delayed nor hesitated, but immediately took off and threw down all his clothes and returned them to his father. He did not even keep his trousers on, and he was completely stripped bare before everyone. The bishop, observing his frame of mind and admiring his fervor and determination, got up and, gathering him in his own arms, covered him with the mantle he was wearing. He understood completely that this was prompted by God and he knew that the action of the man of God, which he had personally observed, contained a mystery.2

  Deep down, its meaning is not really all that mysterious. Apart from the burst of pride or perhaps emotional instability that such radical behavior betrays, it is clear that, given the circumstances, Francis’s gesture also had an allusive meaning. He stripped down to his birthday suit so that the act took on the appearance of precisely what he wanted it to signify: a complete and total rebirth.

  I have briefly summarized Francis’s early years, up to the existential, symbolic episode that signaled the start of his new life. That is when he began helping lepers, overcoming his repugnance at the horror and stench of their festering sores. He shook their hands, welcoming the embrace of these poor souls who were forced to wear cowbells on their ankles so others would know to run the other way. He even discarded the basic clothes he had been given and, seized by a feverish rapture verging on madness, kicked the shoes from his feet, dropped his staff, and was content with just one tunic, replacing his leather belt with a length of rope. He then made the garb whose form echoes the shape of the cross, in order to remove all the temptations of the devil. It was coarse—for they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts (Galatians 5:24)—and of such roughly hewn cloth that no one in the world dare envy it.

  This marked his marriage with poverty and his total abandonment of the world. He spoke of this abandonment quite eloquently in his testament, from which I also took the title of this chapter.3 From that moment on, Francis lived solely to proclaim the word of the Lord, the spirit of the gospel.

  Strong as the mystic love that had possessed him was, his behavior cannot be entirely understood without seeing it in historical context. During those years a few monastic trends arose that required their members to make, among other things, a vow of poverty. Not only individuals, but entire groups and convents were forbidden to own anything; what little sustenance they required had to come from charitable handouts or manual labor. A few “heretical” strains—the ones we now refer to as the Protestant Church—were the first to espouse this message: the Cathars and Waldensians, for example, p
opular among the humblest and poorest levels of society, were openly shocked by the ecclesiastical hierarchs’ ostentatious wealth. The Dominicans, named after founder Dominic de Guzmán, and the Franciscans, named after our dear Francis, rose up to combat such heresies. The vast movement focused on pauperism inspired many within the Church, and Francis’s enthusiasm certainly contributed to its success. Once again, to quote Thomas of Celano:

  At this time he wore a sort of hermit’s habit with a leather belt. He carried a staff in his hand and wore shoes. One day the gospel was being read in that church about how the Lord sent out his disciples to preach. The holy man of God, who was attending there, in order to understand better the words of the gospel, humbly begged the priest after celebrating the solemnities of the Mass to explain the gospel to him. The priest explained it all to him thoroughly line by line. When he heard that Christ’s disciples should not possess gold or silver or money, or carry on their journey a wallet or a sack, nor bread nor a staff, nor to have shoes nor two tunics, but that they should preach the kingdom of God and penance, the holy man, Francis, immediately exulted in the spirit of God. “This is what I want,” he said, “this is what I seek, this is what I desire with all my heart.”4

  There are versions of Francis’s story that tend to gloss over the events and the reactions they met with. Such accounts do not mention the dramatic atmosphere in which Francis made his first choices, the suspicion his movement aroused, and, consequently, the difficulties the Franciscans had in becoming an officially recognized order. In order to have real impact and attract new brothers, Francis needed the pope’s approval, and knew full well that it would not be easy to obtain. His natural inclinations and conscious choices had led him to adopt a way of life that sharply contrasted with the values of the pope and curia. In 1209 Francis and a few of his brothers went to Rome to give Pope Innocent III the first draft of his Rule, outlining a few indispensable directions for leading a holy life—its contents are reported in Thomas of Celano’s text. The pope had it examined and reacted cautiously, approving it only orally; he did not consecrate it with a bull, the official papal seal.

  Those few pages contained revolutionary ideas regarding current mores, and proposed a complete renewal of the human spirit. Those very pages are what make Francis not only a saint for his Church, but a great, humane spirit worthy of everyone’s veneration. The first rule sets the tone for all the others: give up all worldly possessions. When asked about the reasons underlying such a radical choice, he once pointed out that the ownership of private possessions would necessitate the possession of weapons by which to defend them. Wealth leads to the disputes that impede one’s love of God and neighbor. This very radicalism is what set the movement apart from the luxurious lifestyles embraced by the papal curia.

  One day Bernard, Francis’s first disciple, was preaching in a Florentine church and gave an enlightening reply to a generous man who wanted to give alms. “It is true that we are poor,” he said, “but for us, poverty is not a burden as it is to the needy; we opted to become poor, through our own free will.” This freedom is what allows Franciscans to face the inconveniences of poverty with a sense of “joy.” As Matthew (6:16) instructs: “Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.” And in the first version of his Rule (chapter 7), Francis advises: “Let them [the brothers] be careful not to appear as sad and gloomy hypocrites but show themselves joyful, cheerful and consistently gracious in the Lord.”5

  This is the core of the Franciscan way, focused on voluntary sacrifice, living an outwardly miserable life that is instead all the richer in terms of meditation, prayer, and the redemptive action of helping the world’s excluded, its forgotten, the “wretched of the earth,” to use the term coined by the twentieth-century philosopher Frantz Fanon.

  There is only one other movement that, in one respect (and one only), comes close to the Franciscans’, and that is the early twentieth-century kibbutz movement established in what later became Israel. The kibbutz or collective farm, much like the Franciscan communities, abolished private ownership of goods. This radical form of communal life included, as long as it lasted, a shared rearing of children, who lived in their own separate homes and visited with their parents only a couple of hours a day.

  The kibbutz movement’s Communist and Zionist ideals gradually declined over the years, for various reasons. Israel’s economic development made the tough life of the kibbutz less and less attractive to younger generations, much the same way as the Franciscans’ tenets gradually grew less rigorous than the original rules set by the movement’s founder.

  These two movements, from distant places and times, are united by the unique importance they place on free will. One entered a kibbutz by choice, and was also free to leave at will. Similarly, people submitted to Francis’s strict rules by choice, and had to really want it—their conviction became an indispensable condition for withstanding the severity of that particular way of life.

  In the words of Thomas of Celano:

  As followers of most holy poverty, since they had nothing, they loved nothing; so they feared losing nothing. They were satisfied with a single tunic, often patched both inside and out. Nothing about it was refined, rather it appeared lowly and rough so that in it they seemed completely crucified to the world. They wore crude trousers with a cord for a belt. They held firmly to the holy intention of remaining this way and having nothing more. So they were safe wherever they went. Disturbed by no fears, distracted by no cares, they awaited the next day without any worry. Though frequently on hazardous journeys, they were not anxious about where they might stay the next day. Often they needed a place to stay in extreme cold, and a baker’s oven would receive them; or they would hide for the night humbly in caves or crypts.6

  This and yet another anecdote, bordering on the insane, perfectly capture the extreme to which the ideal of voluntary poverty could be taken. In chapters 1 and 8 of the Fioretti, as The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi were first known, we read how Francis explained to his most trusted companion, Brother Leo, what the truest, most perfect joy is. It was a hard winter day and the two were walking in a wind that froze their rough clothes stiff. Francis offers Leo a few examples of admirable charity and conviction regarding conversion: “Brother Leo, though the Brothers Minor throughout all the world were great examples of sanctity and true edifying, nethless write it down and take heed diligently that therein is not perfect joy.” He follows up with some increasingly detailed and lofty instances: “albeit the Brother Minor should speak with the tongue of an angel, and know the courses of the stars and the virtues of herbs; and though all the treasures of the earth were revealed unto him and he understood the virtues of birds, and of fishes, and of all animals, and of men, and of trees, and of stones, and of roots, and of waters, write that not therein is perfect joy.”7 Finally, we come to the point his entire peroration was building up to. For Francis, the perfect joy would be to reach the threshold of the church of St. Mary of the Portiuncula after a long journey on a cold night, knock at the door, and be brutally rejected by the guardian friar: “Get ye gone hence, vilest of thieves, begone to the alms-house, for here ye shall find nor food nor lodging.” To bear such a harsh rebuke with patience—therein lies the truest joy.

  Although in many respects this parable might seem utterly senseless, there is, of course, another explanation. The historian Chiara Frugoni points out that this parable contains “a clear model: Christ betrayed by his own people, beaten, and insulted at the beginning of the Passion.”8 Here, Francis is cast as a new incarnation of Jesus. Many theologians have picked up on this parallel.

  A recent book by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben points out how, in its original form, the monastic ideal is ultimately an individual’s escape from the world. The penitent, the hermit, and the Stylite (or pillar-saint) are all examples of men turning away from
a community—an escape, we might even say, from the body itself—to immerse themselves in meditation and prayer. Later on, however, as more and more people opted to participate in this sequestered kind of life, the community required concrete rules, schedules, discipline, divisions of labor, and hierarchy. In a monastery everything is shared—meals, religious services, the set hours of prayer, work, and rest. The rigor of such a schedule, Agamben writes, “not only had no precedent in the classical world, but, in its uncompromising absoluteness, has perhaps no equal in any modern institution, even in Taylorist production lines.”9 It is not just a question of being poor, denying oneself anything beyond the strict minimum required for survival (a bit of food, a shelter); rather, it is a revolutionary rethinking of how goods are used, arrived at by stepping outside of the norms regarding material possession. Being born poor or forced into poverty by external circumstances is one thing—spontaneously embracing poverty is something else entirely. He who is poor out of necessity and he who is poor by choice only appear to share the same condition, but each perceives his own status in a very different way. Poverty, like chastity and humility, falls within a set rule, but many people have adhered to that rule so completely that they have ultimately appropriated it. Agamben quotes canon regular Stephen of Tournai (1128–1203), who boils this idea down to a few words, concluding that the so-called books of Rules issued by some ascetic movements “non Regula appellatur ab eis, sed vita”: followers referred to them not as the Rule, but rather as Life.