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Date: 2006-10-05

St. Francis, Minus the Myths; Rosary Power

Assisi's Famous Son Was No Dr. Doolittle

By Elizabeth Lev

ROME, OCT. 5, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Last week I spent several days in Assisi with a pilgrimage group. It was a wonderful adventure tooling around the Umbrian countryside and praying at the sites of the great saints, but it was also an eye-opening experience for me to realize that the St. Francis venerated today is a pretty far cry from the St. Francis who lived next to a leper colony outside Assisi in the 1220s.

Unlike the green, rolling hills of Tuscany, the Umbrian terrain is harsh and rugged, with jagged mountain ranges and thick forests teeming with wolves and boar. As the wilderness of the Middle East produced exemplary models of austerity among the desert Fathers of the early centuries, so did the wilds of Umbria in the Middle Ages. This single Italian region produced extraordinary followers of Christ, the likes of Benedict, Scholastica, Francis, Clare and Rita of Cascia (just to name a few).

The pilgrims were Benedictine, so we visited the sites of St. Benedict and Scholastica, Norcia, Subiaco and Montecassino. The Benedictine monasteries perch atop high mountains in secluded areas, seemingly just a few steps from heaven. By contrast, the Basilica of St. Francis and the Porziuncola (the place where Francis lived) sits on the lowest part of Assisi, a city on the much-traveled route to Perugia.

While St. Benedict's monasticism encouraged intense dedication to God in a more individualistic way, St. Francis and his friars applied themselves to public service, which in this day and age makes them seem like a cuddly, user-friendly order.

Assisi itself furthers the image of an ecology-loving, animal-hugging Francis, with illustrated stories of dancing friars in meadows and conversations with birds. He comes across as a kind of fun-loving, 13th-century Dr. Doolittle.

But Francis was prickly and difficult for people in the 13th century, quite different from the modern picture-book version.

Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. Not landed aristocracy, Francis' father belonged to a new, rising Italian class who had worked their way out of peasantry through trade. Francis' father had great hopes for him, and was determined that Francis would never know want, the way his parents had.

Standing in Assisi, one wonders what we would have thought had we been bystanders as the umpteenth fight broke out between Francis and his father. We might well have sided with Francis' father. He had worked all his life to give Francis fine clothes, good food and a warm home -- and all the thanks he got was a kid who stole from the family shop and spent all day hanging around the town outcasts.

What would we have made of Francis as he stripped off all his clothes and threw them at his father, renouncing his family name? Would we have immediately understood, as Francis rejoiced that he would now only have his "Father in Heaven"?

Francis lived in an age of newfound wealth and accessible education. The 13th century saw vast amounts of trade as well as universities cropping up all over Europe. His extreme example of poverty challenged people to disdain the luxury goods that were just becoming more available. His humility and his willingness to be mocked and ridiculed confounded the arrogance of the increasingly educated classes.

He was an uncomfortable figure and even the great Pope Innocent III hesitated to confirm his rule as Francis' example seemed unattainable.

We smile warmly when we think of Francis arranging the first Nativity scene, but we easily forget these were living people on a gelid night in Umbria. Francis sought to emphasize the humility of Christ's birth, not the Christmas-card charm of the scene.

Greater than Francis' devotion to the Nativity, in fact, was his dedication to the Passion. He composed an Office of the Passion and promoted art, prayer and meditation on Christ's suffering. His focus on all the aspects of Christ's passion was rewarded with the stigmata -- Francis was the second man in the history of the church (the first being St. Paul) to bear the same wounds as the crucified Christ.

Even during his own lifetime, Francis saw immense difficulties in his own order. Many of his followers worked against him, trying to render the Franciscan example less radical. Even the quaint painting in the Basilica of St. Francis, "Francis Preaching to Birds," renders the saint praising God to this unlikely congregation precisely because he has been betrayed by some of his own followers, unheeded by his fellow citizens and doubted by the pastors of the Church.

Francis felt called to bring his challenging style of preaching and his radical example of Christ to the Holy Land to try to convert the Muslims. In the era of the Crusades, Francis went to the Holy Land fully expecting to be a martyr in his quest to bring the word of God to the sultan.

He set off with 12 brothers and the small band was captured and beaten. Eventually they ended up in Cairo where Francis was able to engage Islamic scholars in theological debate. The shrine of St. Francis proudly bears the gift given to the saint by the sultan, who was deeply impressed with Francis' example and words.

Francis is perhaps best known as the author of the "Canticle of the Creatures" -- today touted as a kind of ecological manifesto -- but while everyone can remember the part about "Brother Sun" or "Sister Mother Earth," few recall "Sister Bodily Death," who seems to be an uncomfortable medieval leftover. But "Sister Death" is precisely the point of the poem, the warm tone of the canticle stops abruptly when Francis admonishes, "Woe to those who die in mortal sin!"

Addressing all of his followers, Francis wrote frightening words on the fate of him who dies in mortal sin. "The devil tears his soul from his body with so much anguish and tribulation," Francis wrote. "Worms eat the body; and so perishes body and soul in that brief life span and he shall go to hell."

So this year, to honor the feast day of St. Francis, patron of Italy, perhaps instead of just recycling our trash or adopting a pet, we should pray for luxury-loving, increasingly secular Europe to rediscover its Christian identity and soul.

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Remembering Lepanto

The same week we remember St. Francis' example, we also celebrate the important contributions of St. Dominic, contemporary of Francis and founder of the Dominicans. Notable among his contributions was the praying of the rosary.

St. Dominic received the rosary from the Blessed Virgin in a vision while trying to convert the Albigensians in 1208. Mary told the great saint that the rosary was a "weapon the Blessed Trinity wants to use to reform the world." At the Battle of Muret on Sept. 12, 1213, the Marian prayer brought about the defeat of the Albigensians and saw the first shrine built to Our Lady of Victory.

Throughout the centuries, the rosary has been recited especially in times of danger to implore the aid of the Blessed Virgin. This Oct. 7 will be the 435th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, the event which gave the liturgical feast of the rosary to the world.

Throughout the 16th century, naval clashes with the Turkish fleet had been increasing. Having taken Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turks were building a fleet with the intention of conquering all of Europe, first by sea, then by land.

The Turkish fleet was seemingly invincible -- well appointed, superbly led and unflinchingly aggressive. They had captured Cyprus, Rhodes and had only been narrowly repelled at Malta.

Pope St. Pius V, zealous Dominican reformer and friend of St. Charles Borromeo, hoped to stave off the next inevitable attack before it happened and managed to bring together the king of Spain and the republics of Venice and Genoa as well as the papal fleet to stop the Turkish fleet from leaving its own waters.

This remarkable alliance was comprised of many traditional enemies who succeeded in putting aside their differences to aid their common cause. They set sail 200 ships strong to engage the 220 ships of the Turkish fleet.

Pius V, besides his personal penances, enjoined the entire Catholic world to pray the rosary and organized processions throughout the city for the Marian prayer. On Oct. 7, 1571, while working with his cardinals, Pius V looked up and said, "A truce to business; our great task at present is to thank God for the victory which he has just given the Christian army."

Indeed, in a few short hours Don John of Austria, commander of the Holy Alliance, had won the day, not only defeating the Turkish fleet but also freeing almost 20,000 Christian galley slaves from the Turkish boats.

Thus began the feast of Our Lady of Victory, later changed by Pope Gregory XIII to the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary and extended to the whole church by Clement XI in 1716.

Pope John Paul II of blessed memory reminded Catholics that in our modern age we are in more need than ever of the rosary. In the wake of the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, he declared, "Within the current international context, I invite all -- individuals, families, communities -- to pray this Marian prayer, possibly every day, for peace, so that the world can be preserved from the wicked scourge of terrorism."

A year later, he added the luminous mysteries to the rosary to focus on Christ's public ministry.

In these troubled times of unexpected dangers and flare-ups of hostility, Christians can remember that while might fails, and reason breaks down, the most effective weapon in the Christian's arsenal is prayer.

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Elizabeth Lev teaches Christian art and architecture at Duquesne University's Italian campus. She can be reached at lizlev@zenit.org.