In 1986, when Pope John Paul II organized a conference of world religious leaders to promote peace, he held it in Assisi. Apart from the Virgin Mary, he is the best known and the most honored of Catholic saints. Years before he died, Francis was considered a saint, and in eight centuries he has lost none of his prestige. People stole the water in which he had washed his feet it was said to cure sick cows. His words, one writer said, were “soothing, burning, and penetrating.” He had a way of “making his whole body a tongue.” Now, when he arrived in a town, church bells rang. Women locked themselves in their houses.įrancis accepted all this serenely, and the qualities that at the beginning had marked him as an eccentric eventually made him seem holy. Many people regarded him as mad, or dangerous. While preaching, he often would dance, weep, make animal sounds, strip to his underwear, or play the zither. He wore a filthy tunic, with a piece of rope as a belt, and no shoes. Francis (1181/2-1226) was scrawny and plain-looking. “Why you?” a man asked Francesco di Bernardone, known to us now as St. Art by Sassetta, “Saint Francis in Glory” (1437-44) / Courtesy Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Florence For the Church, Francis was too revered not to claim, too radical not to neutralize.
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