Cyou ask yourself why a writer chooses one character over another. Just to honor a historic occasion? Or because the publishers asked him to? Or for fear of not staying grounded in his time?
Reading this book on Saint Francis by Aldo Cazzullowe realize that the author in fact perhaps began driven by the duty to commemorate a great saint, but as he wrote it and as he gradually advanced in his investigations into the life of the young Assisi man, he fell in love with him. The originality of this book lies precisely in this sober and intense love which probably first of all surprised the author.
Francis is not just a religious mansubmissive to a cruel and demanding god, as happens to many saints, but a delicate and sensitive young man, often torn by contradictions. There’s nothing gloomy or fanatic about it. On the contrary wherever he goes he brings with him the joy of livingfriendship towards the weak and the defeated, love towards nature and all its creatures. Francis he did not believe in sacrifice and martyrdom, but in friendship and attention towards the poor and the sick, in respect for all God’s creaturesin peace and harmony, in the desire for love.
The fresco “Preaching to the Birds” is part of the series on the life of Saint Francis painted by Giotto between 1295 and 1299 in the Basilica Maggiore of Assisi (photo Getty Images).
Yet, Francis was a revolutionary who ruined all the practices of the ecclesiastical hierarchybut this did not prevent him from respecting the Church in its ability to network. He was not a fanatic, he did not believe he had the absolute truth in his hands, he understood that the Church in its ability to welcome and spread throughout the world had to be respected. In short, he did not want to destroy the great system of power, but to modify it, with modesty and humility, from within. He didn’t believe in sermons and magic formulas but in example.
Francis, when he sees a leper forced to wear a bell around his neck to warn people of his dangerous presence, feels the need to get closer to him, and it comes naturally to him to hug him, not only out of pity but out of affection. Cazzullo reminds us how rigid medieval society was: «There are the religious: bishops, priests, nuns, monks. There are the military: infantry, knights, men-at-arms and heralds of the Municipality. There are social classes: aristocrats, bourgeois, peasants. No one would dare subvert the order». But Francis did so, to the great scandal of his contemporaries and for a long time also of the Church which struggled to welcome him among its own.
“Francis the first Italian” by Aldo Cazzullo
The influence of the Troubadours
Francesco liked to sing. And he did it with the French songs learned from his mother Pica, of Provençal origins. Certainly all his ideas of freedom and kindness derive from Occitan culture which Pica had fed on, which in turn had infected her son.
The story of Francis’ meeting with Pope Honorius III is beautiful. Who at the beginning, seeing him arrive barefoot, dressed in rags, poor and dirty, tells him to go among his pig friends. But Francis has something magnetic in his gaze and his charisma touches hearts. Indeed, the pope can’t sleep after dismissing him and ends up calling him back. That night he dreamed that the derelict beggar was holding on his head the basilica of St. John Lateran which was falling apart. Thus Francis, who was seen as a heretic, manages to obtain permission to preach the Gospeland his rule is tolerated even if not formally accepted.
“Saint Francis of Assisi” by Giovanni Duprè, 1881, Assisi (photo Getty Images).
Francesco’s relationship with the female world is well told. Like Christ, Francis addresses women as people and not just as dangerous temptresses prone to the temptations of the devil. In this we recognize once again the influence of the Pica mother and her troubadour culture which placed women high in the symbolic sphere, distant and unattainable, but respectable and close to the sacred. This is a highly novel attitude for the time and for the traditional Church.
Far from power
Francis’ respect for women is such that in his public speeches he often speaks of God as if he were a father but also a mother. And she talks about herself as a loving and maternal body. This was astonishing news in a patriarchal society that treated women as capable only of bearing children and obeying.
Francis didn’t care about miracles, even though many are attributed to him. For him it was more important to inspire surprise and serenity in a desolate heart than to heal a sick person.
“Saint Francis of Assisi receives the stigmata” by Giambattista Tiepolo, 1767-1769 (© Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado).
It reminds me of a beautiful novel by Laura Mancinelli The miracle of Saint Odiliawhich tells of a large family that wanted to make a saint out of its youngest child. And they subject her to sacrifices and mortuary practices. But Odilia has a joyful character and has her own way, sweet and serene, of loving the Lord, based on friendship, on meeting others, on festive solidarity towards the weakest, and ends up making roses bloom in a frozen winter. This humble miracle will make her become a saint despite all expectations based on pain and sacrifice.
I found the story of Francesco’s relationship with animals delicate. It is said that he made a pact with the wolf so that, in exchange for food from the villagers, he would no longer harm living beings. A pact of peace and brotherhood between a wild animal and a human being. His gentle familiarity with crickets, with birds, shows the modernity of a man of great delicacy of soul, far from power, humble and chaste, how he will write about water.
The chronicle, written at the tip of the pen, of Francesco’s bitter end is beautiful. Of the wounds he hid so as not to upset his brothers, of his loneliness, of the Christian acceptance of death. From those feelings of great sacral strength comes one of the most beautiful poems in Italian literature: The song of creaturesin which he even calls death his sister.