The friars

The merchant's son of Assisi

The monks of The desert and the monastery mostly stayed in one house to pray and work. The new orders of the thirteenth century were different. Their brothers owned no land or property; they worked with their hands or begged, and went from town to town preaching. They are called mendicants, from the Latin for begging, or friars, from the word for brothers.

Francis was born around 1181 in Assisi in central Italy, the son of a rich cloth merchant. He dreamed of knighthood, was captured in 1202 in a war with neighbouring Perugia and held for about a year, and fell ill after he came home. Near death, in his Testament of 1226, he recalls that the Lord himself led him among lepers. According to the first accounts of his life, such as Thomas of Celano's The First Life of St Francis, around 1206, when his father brought him before the bishop to recover his property, Francis gave back even the clothes he was wearing.

The same accounts tell that around 1208 he heard at Mass the Gospel of Jesus sending out the twelve, said that this was the life he wanted, and threw away his shoes and his staff:

As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ … Freely you have received; freely give. Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts. Take no bag for the road, or second tunic, or sandals, or staff

Matthew 10:7-10

Little brothers and poor sisters

Young men of Assisi soon followed him and gave what they had to the poor, as Jesus told the rich young man: "go, sell your possessions and give to the poor" (Matthew 19:21). Jerome warns on this verse that "it is not sufficient for perfection that they despise money, unless they also follow the Saviour" Jerome. For Francis, poverty was not the goal but the way of following the poor Christ.

In 1209 he went to Rome with eleven brothers and laid before Pope Innocent III a short rule of life made of Gospel sayings. The first accounts say that the pope approved it by word of mouth; its text does not survive. The brothers called themselves the lesser brothers, Friars Minor, and as the order grew quickly Francis wrote the rule again. Confirmed by a bull of Pope Honorius III in 1223, it is still the rule of the Franciscans.

In 1212 Clare, a daughter of a noble family of Assisi, left her home at night, came to Francis and had her hair cut off. She lived with her sisters beside the church of San Damiano in prayer and poverty, and asked the popes again and again for the right to own nothing. The rule she wrote was approved in 1253, two days before her death, the first rule written by a woman to be approved. Her sisters are known as the Poor Clares.

In 1219, while a crusading army was fighting at Damietta in Egypt, Francis crossed the lines unarmed and preached the gospel before the sultan, al-Kamil. A crusading bishop who was there wrote that the sultan listened to him and sent him back unharmed. In 1225, sick and losing his sight, Francis made the Canticle of the Sun, praising God with Brother Sun, Sister Moon and all creatures, and near the end he added a verse for Sister Death. He died on 3 October 1226. His Testament says that the Lord showed him he should live by the form of the holy gospel, and charges the brothers to work with their hands and keep poverty.

The much-loved Prayer of St Francis, which asks God to make us instruments of his peace, is not his. It first appeared in 1912, unsigned, in a small French Catholic magazine, and his name was put to it later.

Dominic the preacher

Dominic (c. 1170–1221) was a canon of the cathedral of Osma in Castile. Around 1206, travelling through southern France with Diego, bishop of Osma, he found the Cathars widespread there. They taught that the spirit comes from the good God and matter from an evil power, and the strict, simple lives of their ‘perfect’ won people's respect. The papal legates sent to preach against them, by contrast, travelled with a grand retinue. According to Dominic's successor and first biographer, Jordan of Saxony, in his Libellus on the Beginnings of the Order of Preachers, Diego and Dominic urged them to go on foot and preach in poverty like the apostles.

From 1209 a crusade came into that land with the sword (see the next lesson, The Inquisition and heresy), but Dominic went on preaching with words and poverty. In 1215 he was living with a few companions in Toulouse, and in 1216 Pope Honorius III approved his Order of Preachers, the Dominicans. They took the ancient Rule of Augustine, and from 1217 Dominic sent brothers to the university cities of Paris and Bologna, for preachers must study.

By the middle of the century both orders taught at Paris and Oxford. The Dominican Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan Bonaventure taught at Paris in the same years, and both died in 1274; Thomas's thought is the Theology course's Thomas Aquinas. Bonaventure, as head of the Franciscans, wrote their official life of Francis, and in 1266 the order commanded the earlier lives to be destroyed. So historians compare the accounts that survive with care.

Light and shadow, and today

There is shadow too. From 1233 the popes entrusted the search for and trial of heretics chiefly to the Dominicans, and to the Franciscans as well. The heirs of preachers who had chosen poverty to persuade became judges who handed people over to the fire. Among the Franciscans themselves the quarrel over how strictly to keep poverty grew bitter, and in 1318 four friars who held to strict poverty were burned at Marseilles.

The Catholic Church declared Francis a saint in 1228, and Franciscans, Poor Clares and lay members still follow his way; in 2013 the first pope took his name. There are Anglican Franciscan brothers and sisters, and some Lutheran calendars remember him on 4 October. The hymn ‘All Creatures of Our God and King’, sung in many churches, is an English paraphrase of his Canticle from the early twentieth century.

The Christ whom Francis and Dominic followed came "to preach good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18):

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.

2 Corinthians 8:9

Matthew Henry exclaims on this verse, "From what riches, blessed Lord, to what poverty didst thou descend for our sakes!" Matthew Henry. Not every Christian takes vows, but the church has been renewed whenever it has gone to the lepers and the poor and preached with its life more than its words. And the friars' story shows that even that zeal, once it gains power, can become a sword over others. The next lesson, The Inquisition and heresy, tells that darker story.

Practice