First, money often made people act irrationally; they
took a sensuous pleasure in counting coins and running
their fi ngers through coins. Second, some people made
the acquisition of money their goal in life. Third, saving
money conduced to laziness: if a brother earned enough
money for several days’ worth of food, he might decide
not to work during those days. More philosophically,
when Francis stripped himself naked before the bishop,
he had decided to forgo all security but God’s; and it
would be impossible to depend only on God if there was
a possibility of accumulating wealth. Ultimately, Francis
decided to reject in its entirety the money economy that
was then developing in Italy.
Francis and his band covered great distances, work-
ing to support themselves and preaching to anyone who
would listen (although unfortunately we do not have a
single sermon of his). Since Francis and most of the
brothers were not trained in theology, they focused on
calling people to penance and on trying to reconcile
people who were odds with one another. As regards
penance, this early ministry was a diffi cult one, because
many of the people to whom it was directed felt that they
were already followers of Jesus: they had been baptized;
they went to mass; they crossed themselves and prayed.
But Francis felt that such people often took Christianity
for granted, as a routine, whereas he wanted them to
experience Christ and seek forgiveness more intensely.
Francis was on fi re with the love of Christ and wanted
to spread the fi re throughout the world. As regards rec-
onciliation, Francis’s profound desire may have arisen
because he had seen so much divisiveness—in his
family, in his town, in the church, and between secular
and ecclesiastical authorities. There is evidence that he
helped bring peace in several divided cities, including
Arezzo, Siena, Bologna, and Assisi itself. There is a
popular story, probably apocryphal, that he worked out
a peace agreement between the people of Gubbio and a
wolf which had eaten several of their fellow citizens.
The story of the wolf of Gubbio is, of course, only one
of many stories about Saint Francis and animals. One of
the most famous concerns a sermon he preached to the
birds at Bevagna, near Assisi. Francis did indeed love
animals; he also loved plants and even rocks, regarding
all of creation as his brothers and sisters. He reasoned
that God created not just humans but every thing that
exists, and that therefore all things had a common par-
ent and were all part of the same family, with God as
the father. Francis tried to live that belief by treating
everything with respect and reverence. He is the author
of a great song, Canticle of the Creatures, in which he
sings the praises of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and his
other siblings, including Sister Death.
It is easy to romanticize Francis’s love of creation and
think of him as a precursor of modern conservationists
and people who hug trees. However, for Francis the love
of creatures was always a consequence of the love of
God and of a desire to experience God through God’s
creation. Bonaventure writes that “in beautiful things
Francis saw beauty itself,” and that for Francis God’s
works were like footprints one could follow in order to
get closer to God. In theological terms, Francis had a
sacramental understanding of creation.
In the years after Innocent III approved the “primitive
rule,” the Franciscan brotherhood underwent tremendous
growth. Eventually, the order had to change because it
was no longer simply a small band of brothers wander-
ing the roads of Italy, working in the fi elds, sleeping in
barns, and preaching on street corners. Francis himself
had no real plans for this new order. He was intuitive
rather than analytical, and his charismatic personality
was not very well suited for the head of a large group
of men, most of whom he did not know. Thus he asked
the pope for a cardinal protector to be a guide and a
liaison with the hierarchy, and he was fortunate in the
appointment of Cardinal Ugolino (later Pope Gregory
IX), an astute churchman who was deeply moved by
and devoted to Francis.
However, even with Cardinal Ugolino to help him,
Francis was not equipped to handle the tasks of the read-
er of an order. Not only was he frustrated; so were many
of the newer friars who did not know him personally and
had not experiencd his powerful attraction. There were
a number of legitimate concerns. For example, could
the friars build permanent places to live? Could they
have books?—and if so, would they not need money
to buy books and places to keep them? As more priests
joined the order, where were they to say the mass? How
were they to obtain and keep the vestments and vessels
necessary for celebrating the sacraments? What was to
happen to friars who had grown too old to live as tran-
sients? These were not the sort of questions with which
Francis had much patience, and he became perplexed
and deeply troubled by the growing complexity of his
order. Toward the end of his life, there was already a
distance between friars who saw a need for the order to
evolve and change and those who regarded any change
from the way Francis lived as a betrayal of their founder.
Many of these problems were not resolved in Francis’s
lifetime or, for that matter, for long afterward.
The “primitive rule” that Innocent III approved was
little more than a collection of passages from scripture,
and we have no copy of it today. By 1221, Francis had
composed a longer and more complex rule; but many
friars did not approve of it, and it was never made the
offi cial rule of the order. Finally, in 1223, Pope Honorius
III approved a rule, the Regula bullata, that remains to
this day the rule for the Friars Minor (the actual name of
the Franciscan order). Francis no doubt had help fromFRANCIS OF ASSISI, SAINT