1 of 4

Pietro di Bernardone was a successful cloth merchant and considerable landowner, having orchards and farms in the plain below Assisi and on the slopes of nearby Mount Subiaso.

He was also a great enthusiast for things French; he was away in France on business, in fact, when his son Giovanni was born. Upon his return, he renamed the boy Francesco, “the little Frenchman,” and made sure his son learned to speak French.

As the boy grew, Pietro taught him the family business, and he was no doubt proud when his robust 21-year-old marched off to war with fellow Assisians to battle rival city Perugia. He was also no doubt alarmed when he heard that his son had been captured and imprisoned. He paid a handsome ransom to get him back. But his son was never the same after that. Francis went off once more to war, but his heart wasn’t in it; he returned saying he was seeking a different calling.

This new calling began to alarm Pietro when one day his son impulsively took fine fabric from the shop, rode to market, and sold it— along with the family horse he had been riding!

A month later, Pietro was informed that Francis was walking the streets of Assisi, begging for food and becoming a laughingstock. An enraged Pietro found his son and beat him. He dragged him home and locked him in a dark cellar, limiting him to bread and water, until his son came to his senses.

These then customary and legal means of enforcing parental authority did not bear fruit. As soon as Pietro was called away on business, Francis’s mother let her son go.

That’s when Pietro called in the authorities. He told the bishop that his son, divine calling or not, had no business stealing from the family. The bishop summoned Francis and instructed him to return what he had taken. Pietro and the bishop waited as an obviously shaken Francis stepped into an adjoining room. When the door opened again, Pietro saw his son walk out naked, carrying his clothes in a neat pile. He placed them at Pietro’s feet and said to all present, “Up to now, I have called Pietro di Bernardone father. Hereafter I shall not say, Father Pietro di Bernardone, but Our Father Who Art in Heaven!”

It is a scene full of wonder. Was Francis’s acceptance of his divine mission primarily a rejection of his father? If so, what personal issues divided father and son? Or did a life of poverty require forsaking his father, who would always represent the lure of Mammon, the life of ease and comfort?

We simply don’t know, for the historical sources remain silent. We can only watch as transfixed son and astonished father walk out of the cathedral, one on the narrow path of pilgrimage, the other on the wide path to his fabric shop—never, as far as we know, to have anything to do with each other again.

Like many young men, Giles was no doubt filled with dreams of glory, daring, and great deeds. He observed the eccentric yet enchanting behavior of his fellow Assisian, Francis. Then, after two prominent citizens of the town forsook wealth and status to join Francis, 18-year-old Giles did the same. On Saint George’s Day, when churches across Europe honored the great knight’s dragon slaying, Giles presented himself to the “little poor man.”

Giles became a sort of spiritual knight, traveling to Rome, to Saint James of Compostela in Spain, to the Holy Land. His quest? To know his Lord as he visited holy places, and to make him known as he lived and preached the way of Francis.

next page... |  1 of 4

share this page

RSS Feed   RSS Help