Read Online On the Road with Francis of Assisi by Linda Bird Francke - Free Book Online
Authors: Linda Bird Francke
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Italy.
We leave Foligno in a cheerful mood, as presumably did Francis until he returned to San Damiano, on foot, with all the money he had made to repair it—and the priest refused to accept it. The priest was all too aware of Francis’s high-living reputation and interpreted the humble conversion he was professing as mockery. “It seemed to him that Francis, just the day before was living outrageously among his relatives and acquaintances and exalting his stupidity above others,” Celano writes. Francis somehow managed to persuade the priest at least to let him stay at the church, but the priest left the bag of money, untouched, in a windowsill “out of fear of Francis’s parents.” He was right to be afraid of Francis’s parents. And so, with good reason, was Francis.
Freud could have written volumes about the father-son relationship in the ensuing struggle between Pietro and Francis Bernadone. And it began as soon as his father found out that Francis not only had sold the family’s fabric and horse but also had moved into the priest’s house at San Damiano. “Calling together his friends and neighbors, he [Pietro] hurried off to find him [Francis],” records the
Legend of the Three Companions.
But Francis was nowhere to be found. “When he [Francis] heard of the threats of his pursuers, foreseeing their arrival, he hid from his father’s anger by creeping into a secret cave which he had prepared as a refuge.”
Francis hid from his father in that “secret cave” for a month. Someone, no one knows who (I think it was his mother), brought him food while he “prayed continually with many tears that the Lord would deliver him from such persecution.” And the Lord did, after a fashion. The Francis who voluntarily emerged at last from the cave was a changed man, “glowing with inner radiance . . . ready to face the insults and blows of his persecutors.” And he got them.
One can only imagine the reaction on the streets of Assisi when Francis returned “light-heartedly” from his month underground, dressed in rags, pale, emaciated—and smiling. “When his friends and relatives saw him, they covered him with insults, calling him a fool and a madman, and hurling stones and mud at him.” Not surprisingly, and perhaps accurately, they thought “he must be out of his mind.” His father certainly did.
Pietro Bernadone shoved his way through the crowd stoning his son, but instead of protecting him, he “sprang on his son like a wolf on a lamb; and, his face furious, his eyes glaring, he seized him with many blows and dragged him home.” The excavated cell still visible in the designated remains of the Bernadone house in Assisi became a torture chamber for Francis. “For many days, his father used threats and blows to bend his son’s will, to drag him back from the path of good he had chosen, and to force him to return to the vanities of the world,” notes the
Legend of the Three Companions.
He failed.
Francis held fast, in the age-old Christian tradition of enduring physical trials and overcoming temptations. When his father was called away on business, his mother tried to reason with him in a more gentle manner, but Francis rebuffed her entreaties as well. And then she did what any caring mother would do: “When she saw that his mind was irrevocably made up and that nothing would move him from his good resolution, she was filled with tender pity, and, breaking his bonds, she set him free.”
But Pietro was not through with his son. Soon after he returned to Assisi, and roundly beat his wife for freeing Francis, he went to the local civil authority and formally charged his son with robbery. “When the authorities saw how enraged Pietro was, they sent a messenger to summon Francis,” continues the
Legend of the Three Companions.
But Francis had inherited his father’s shrewdness and summarily rejected the civil complaint, claiming that he was “the servant only of God and therefore no longer
We leave Foligno in a cheerful mood, as presumably did Francis until he returned to San Damiano, on foot, with all the money he had made to repair it—and the priest refused to accept it. The priest was all too aware of Francis’s high-living reputation and interpreted the humble conversion he was professing as mockery. “It seemed to him that Francis, just the day before was living outrageously among his relatives and acquaintances and exalting his stupidity above others,” Celano writes. Francis somehow managed to persuade the priest at least to let him stay at the church, but the priest left the bag of money, untouched, in a windowsill “out of fear of Francis’s parents.” He was right to be afraid of Francis’s parents. And so, with good reason, was Francis.
Freud could have written volumes about the father-son relationship in the ensuing struggle between Pietro and Francis Bernadone. And it began as soon as his father found out that Francis not only had sold the family’s fabric and horse but also had moved into the priest’s house at San Damiano. “Calling together his friends and neighbors, he [Pietro] hurried off to find him [Francis],” records the
Legend of the Three Companions.
But Francis was nowhere to be found. “When he [Francis] heard of the threats of his pursuers, foreseeing their arrival, he hid from his father’s anger by creeping into a secret cave which he had prepared as a refuge.”
Francis hid from his father in that “secret cave” for a month. Someone, no one knows who (I think it was his mother), brought him food while he “prayed continually with many tears that the Lord would deliver him from such persecution.” And the Lord did, after a fashion. The Francis who voluntarily emerged at last from the cave was a changed man, “glowing with inner radiance . . . ready to face the insults and blows of his persecutors.” And he got them.
One can only imagine the reaction on the streets of Assisi when Francis returned “light-heartedly” from his month underground, dressed in rags, pale, emaciated—and smiling. “When his friends and relatives saw him, they covered him with insults, calling him a fool and a madman, and hurling stones and mud at him.” Not surprisingly, and perhaps accurately, they thought “he must be out of his mind.” His father certainly did.
Pietro Bernadone shoved his way through the crowd stoning his son, but instead of protecting him, he “sprang on his son like a wolf on a lamb; and, his face furious, his eyes glaring, he seized him with many blows and dragged him home.” The excavated cell still visible in the designated remains of the Bernadone house in Assisi became a torture chamber for Francis. “For many days, his father used threats and blows to bend his son’s will, to drag him back from the path of good he had chosen, and to force him to return to the vanities of the world,” notes the
Legend of the Three Companions.
He failed.
Francis held fast, in the age-old Christian tradition of enduring physical trials and overcoming temptations. When his father was called away on business, his mother tried to reason with him in a more gentle manner, but Francis rebuffed her entreaties as well. And then she did what any caring mother would do: “When she saw that his mind was irrevocably made up and that nothing would move him from his good resolution, she was filled with tender pity, and, breaking his bonds, she set him free.”
But Pietro was not through with his son. Soon after he returned to Assisi, and roundly beat his wife for freeing Francis, he went to the local civil authority and formally charged his son with robbery. “When the authorities saw how enraged Pietro was, they sent a messenger to summon Francis,” continues the
Legend of the Three Companions.
But Francis had inherited his father’s shrewdness and summarily rejected the civil complaint, claiming that he was “the servant only of God and therefore no longer
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