Sang the Canticle of the Sun, nearly blind and dying

Pray with Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226) was the son of a wealthy Italian cloth merchant who renounced his inheritance before the Bishop of Assisi for a life of radical poverty and founded the Order of Friars Minor (the Franciscans). One of the very few saints of his age to leave writings in his own voice, he crossed the battle lines of the Fifth Crusade to meet the Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil (1219), is reported by his earliest biographers to be the first documented bearer of the stigmata (1224), and — nearly blind and gravely ill — composed the Canticle of the Creatures, which made him the patron of ecology and animals.

Patron of EcologyAnimalsItalyThe PoorMerchants

Feast day · October 4

I Signature moments

What made Francis remarkable

The moments worth telling — the astonishing turns of a life.

c. 1205/06

The kiss of the leper

Lepers — people with leprosy, the disease his world feared most — lived banished outside the walls, announcing themselves with a bell. Francis was more repelled by them than by anything. Then one day, riding below Assisi, he got down from his horse, pressed money into a leper's hand — and kissed it. At the end of his life he wrote that in that moment what had been bitter to him was turned into sweetness.

The thing you avoid hardest can be the exact place your life turns. Francis dates his whole conversion not to a vision — but to touching the person he feared.

c. 1206

The crucifix of San Damiano

In a half-ruined chapel outside the walls, praying before an old painted crucifix, he heard a command: go, repair my house, which is falling into ruin. He took it literally — begged stones, mixed mortar, rebuilt three chapels with his hands — before he understood that the house was the Church herself.

Start with the small, concrete thing in front of you. The meaning grows out of the doing — not the other way around.

c. 1206

Renouncing his inheritance

His furious father dragged him before the bishop over the money Francis kept giving away. Francis ended the dispute in the most radical way imaginable: he stripped off every piece of clothing his father's money had bought, laid it at his feet, and said that from now on his only father was the Father in heaven. He stood naked in front of his whole town — and free.

He didn't negotiate a better deal with his old life. Freedom began exactly where the safety net ended.

+All 7 moments

1209/1210

Papal approval of the brotherhood

In 1209/10 Francis walked to Rome with eleven companions — a dropout in a patched tunic asking the most powerful man in Europe to approve a rule that was little more than lines from the Gospel. Innocent III said yes. Tradition tells that the pope had dreamed of the Lateran basilica tipping over — held up by one small poor man.

The Church at her best: big enough to recognize that her renewal had just arrived barefoot, and to bless it instead of burying it.

1219

Meeting the Sultan

In 1219, in the middle of a crusade, Francis walked unarmed across the battle lines at Damietta in Egypt to meet Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil — the enemy commander. He came to speak of Christ; he was received, heard out, and sent back unharmed. In an age that knew only war between the two faiths, both armies let him through alive.

Meet the 'enemy' as a person, with nothing in your hands. Francis did it 800 years before anyone called it dialogue.

September 1224

The stigmata on La Verna

In September 1224, during a forty-day fast on Mount La Verna, his companions record that Francis received the wounds of Christ in his hands, feet and side — the first documented case in Christian history. He hid them, pulling his sleeves low, for the two years he had left to live.

He never displayed the wounds and never explained them. The man closest to Christ talked about it least.

1225

The Canticle of the Creatures

Nearly blind, in constant pain, lying in a dark hut by San Damiano, Francis composed a song of praise — to Brother Sun and Sister Moon, to wind, water, fire, and at the end to Sister Death. Not despite the darkness: out of it. It stands among the first great poems of the Italian language.

Praise is not a mood for good days. The most joyful prayer of the Middle Ages was written by a dying man who could no longer see the sun he was praising.

II In their own words

Praise be to Thee, my Lord, with all Thy creatures, especially to my worshipful brother sun, the which lights up the day, and through him dost Thou brightness give.
Francis of Assisi · Canticle of the Sun (Cantico di Frate Sole) · V. 3

“Praise be to Thee, my Lord, with all Thy creatures, especially to my worshipful brother sun.”
— Canticle of Brother Sun (Cantico di Frate Sole), Robinson translation 1906 · v. 3

“Praised be my Lord for sister moon and for the stars, in heaven Thou hast formed them clear and precious and fair.”
— Canticle of Brother Sun (Cantico di Frate Sole), Robinson translation 1906 · v. 5

III

Who was Francis?

Francis was born in Assisi in 1181/82, the son of the wealthy cloth merchant Pietro Bernardone: a reveller, the leader of the town's young set, in love with dreams of knighthood. The war against Perugia brought him a year in prison and a long illness — after which the old dreams tasted stale.

In the half-ruined church of San Damiano he heard, before the crucifix, the command to rebuild "my house." He took it literally and hauled stones, before he grasped that more was meant than masonry. The conflict with his father came to a head before the Bishop of Assisi: Francis laid his clothes on the square and gave everything back — he stood naked before the town, and free.

What Francis wrote

The writings that survive — and what tradition only ascribes.

The Canticle of the Creatures (Canticle of Brother Sun), 1225 his only surviving vernacular (Umbrian Italian) poem.
The Testament · 1226 dictated near death, his most personal statement.
The Earlier Rule (Regula non bullata), 1221 the fuller, unapproved rule.
The Later Rule (Regula bullata), 1223 the papally approved Franciscan rule.
The Admonitions a collection of short spiritual counsels.
The Praises of God (Laudes Dei altissimi) and the Blessing for Brother Leo, 1224 written on Mount La Verna, and the parchment (the Chartula) survives in Francis's own hand at Assisi.
Prayer before the Crucifix 1206 widely accepted as authentic; tied to his conversion at San Damiano.
Letters (to the Entire Order, to the Faithful, to Brother Leo, to a Minister, to the Rulers of the Peoples, to the Clergy)
Office of the Passion Salutation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Salutation of the Virtues, Exhortation to the Praise of God, Rule for Hermitages

Prayers

The prayers themselves, and how each one came to be.

In their own words

The Canticle of the Creatures

Most high, omnipotent, good Lord, thine be the praise, the glory, the honour, and all benediction. To thee alone, Most High, do they belong, and no man is worthy to name thee. Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures, and especially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who brings us the light... Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us, and humble, and precious, and clean. Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth divers fruits, and flowers of many colours, and grass.

Canticle of Brother Sun, 1225

In the original · Umbrian (vernacular), 1225

Altissimu, onnipotente, bon Signore,
tue so’ le laude, la gloria e l’honore et onne benedictione.

Laudato sie, mi Signore, cum tucte le tue creature,
spetialmente messor lo frate sole,
lo qual è iorno, et allumini noi per loi.

Laudato si’, mi Signore, per sor aqua,
la quale è multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta.

In their own words

The Praises of God

Thou art holy, Lord, the only God, and Thy deeds are wonderful. Thou art strong. Thou art great. Thou art the Most High... Thou art good, all good, the highest good, the Lord God, living and true. Thou art love, charity. Thou art wisdom. Thou art humility. Thou art patience. Thou art beauty. Thou art our hope.

Laudes Dei altissimi, 1224 (the *Chartula*, in Francis's own hand)

In the original · Latin, September 1224

Tu es sanctus Dominus Deus solus, qui facis mirabilia.
Tu es fortis, tu es magnus, tu es altissimus …
Tu es amor, caritas; tu es sapientia, tu es humilitas,
tu es patientia, tu es pulchritudo, tu es mansuetudo …

The Church's prayer

Collect for the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (4 October)

O God, who through the merits of blessed Francis dost enrich Thy Church with a new offspring: grant us; that, after his example, we may despise earthly things and ever rejoice in the participation of heavenly gifts. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

How Francis prayed

Prayer was not an activity Francis fitted into his day; his early biographer Thomas of Celano wrote that he had become "not so much a man praying as prayer itself." That is a hagiographer's phrase, but it points at something his own writings confirm: an unbroken habit of praise. He kept the Divine Office faithfully, and when he had no breviary he prayed the psalms and the "We adore You" he taught his brothers. He repeatedly withdrew to remote hermitages — the Carceri above Assisi, Fonte Colombo, Greccio, and above all Mount La Verna — to fast and pray for long stretches, especially before feasts. His Rule for Hermitages shows how deliberately he structured this solitude, with some brothers keeping silence and prayer while others served them.

His prayer was intensely bodily and affective. Sources close to him describe nights of weeping, prostration, and repetition of a single phrase — reportedly "My God and my all" — until dawn. It was rooted in specific places and objects: the crucifix at San Damiano that he heard speak; the Eucharist and the "holy churches" he reverenced (in the Testament he says he simply wanted to pray, "We adore You, Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all Your churches"); and creation itself, which he read as a book of praise. The great fast on Mount La Verna in 1224, from which his biographers date the stigmata, was above all a retreat of prayer. Even his final illness became prayer: nearly blind and suffering, he answered pain with the Canticle of the Creatures, blessing God through sun, water, earth and finally death. Legend embroiders the details, but the shape — praise wrung out of hardship — is his own.

Praying with the saints

Francis, Mary, and the rosary

Francis died in 1226, before the rosary took the shape we know today, and he never counted its beads. But the turn the rosary makes — toward Mary, and through her to Christ — he had long since made his own.

His most beloved place on earth was hers: the tiny Porziuncola chapel, Saint Mary's, where he gathered his first brothers and where, dying, he asked to be laid on the bare ground. Two years before his death he kept a forty-day fast in her honour on Mount La Verna — the fast in which he received the stigmata. And he greeted her in words of his own, among the few prayers that survive in his hand:

“Hail, holy Lady, most holy Queen, Mother of God, Mary who art ever Virgin — hail His palace, hail His tabernacle, hail His dwelling.”
Francis of Assisi, Salutation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

To pray the rosary is to make that same turn with your hands: to greet Mary, and let her lead you to her Son, one bead and one mystery at a time. It is not a keepsake to own. It is a way of praying — the way Francis prayed, put into your fingers.

Take it further

Hand-strung in Europe

The Francis rosary

Francis on the centrepiece, faceted glass in your colour, the crucifix in your finish.

Design yours

Print-grade · made to order

The Francis book

Take home what you found here — Francis's path, prayers and paintings, deepened in one lasting volume.

Coming soon

See the Francis book

Pray with others

Catherine of Siena →

Mystic and Doctor of the Church who told popes their minds

Anthony the Great →

Gave away everything and wrestled 85 years in the desert

Jesus Christ →

God made man, who withdrew to the mountains at night to pray

VI Patron of

Patron of what — and why

Some of it a life decided. Some of it a pope declared.

Merchants

He is patron of the trade he walked out of. Francis was the son of Pietro di Bernardone, a prosperous cloth merchant, and grew up with money, fine clothes and the ambitions of the merchant class. When he chose poverty he did it in his father's own currency: before the Bishop of Assisi he stripped off his clothes and handed the cloth back — the family's whole business, returned in the town square. Merchants did not lose him. They kept him.

Thomas of Celano, Vita Prima (1228/29) · Bonaventure, Legenda Maior (c. 1260)

The Poor

Not because he helped the poor, but because he joined them. His own Testament dates his conversion to the day he embraced the lepers he had always dreaded, and found that the bitterness was turned into sweetness. He took no property, begged for bread, and called poverty not a hardship but a bride.

Francis of Assisi, Testament (his own words) · Thomas of Celano, Vita Prima

Animals

This is the picture everyone has, and it is older than the paintings. The Fioretti tell how he preached to the birds until they fell silent to listen, and how he made peace with the wolf that terrorised Gubbio. The stories are legend rather than chronicle — but they were told because they fit the man who addressed the sun as his brother and called death his sister.

The Little Flowers of St Francis (Fioretti, 14th c.) — legend, not chronicle · Canticle of the Creatures

Ecology

Declared 29 November 1979

The youngest of his patronages, and the one he earned while going blind. Ill and in constant pain, Francis dictated the Canticle of the Creatures — praise of God through Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Sister Water, Mother Earth. John Paul II named him heavenly patron of those who promote ecology precisely for that song: a man who saw creation as gift rather than supply.

John Paul II, apostolic letter Inter Sanctos, 29 November 1979

Italy

Declared 18 June 1939

Declared on the eve of a war. On 18 June 1939, three months before the world went under, Pius XII named Francis and Catherine of Siena the principal patrons of Italy — Francis as the poor and humble one, held up as an example to what the letter called the turbulent men of his age. The choice was an argument: a country arming itself was given a saint who had given everything away.

Pius XII, Licet commissa nobis, 18 June 1939 — jointly with Catherine of Siena

Frequently asked

What is Francis of Assisi the patron saint of?+

Francis is the patron of ecology and animals (environmental and animal protection), of Italy, of the poor, and of merchants. The ecological patronage grows out of his Canticle of the Creatures, which praises God through Brother Sun, Sister Water and our Mother Earth.

When is the feast day of Francis of Assisi?+

His feast day is 4 October. Francis died on the evening of 3 October 1226 at the Portiuncula chapel he loved, and was canonized swiftly, in 1228.

Was Francis of Assisi a priest?+

No. Francis was ordained a deacon but never a priest — remarkable for the founder of a major religious order. He chose to remain a deacon out of humility, preaching and serving the poor rather than presiding at the altar.

Did Francis of Assisi create the first nativity scene?+

Yes. At Greccio on Christmas of 1223 Francis staged the first living nativity — a manger, hay, and a live ox and donkey — so that ordinary people could see the poverty of Christ's birth with their own eyes. His earliest biographer, Thomas of Celano, recorded the night, and the Christmas crib kept in homes and churches today descends directly from it.

Where is Francis of Assisi buried?+

He is buried in the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi, begun in 1228, two years after his death. His tomb was sealed and its exact location deliberately hidden for safety; it was lost for centuries and only rediscovered beneath the lower church in 1818. His remains rest there still, in the crypt.

Why do people pray with Francis of Assisi?+

Because he left prayers of praise that turn the ordinary world into thanksgiving — above all the Canticle of the Creatures (1225), one of the earliest poems in the Italian vernacular, which he dictated while nearly blind and in constant pain. Many also pray his Prayer before the Crucifix of San Damiano, tied to the moment of his conversion: 'Most High, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart.'

Did Francis of Assisi pray the rosary?+

No — the rosary took its familiar form after his lifetime (he died in 1226). But Francis had a deep devotion to Mary: his most beloved church was hers, the Porziuncola; two years before his death he kept a Lent in her honour on Mount La Verna; and he composed his own Salutation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. To pray a rosary is to make the turn toward Mary that Francis had already made.

Did Francis of Assisi write the 'Peace Prayer' ('Lord, make me an instrument of your peace')?+

No — despite being almost universally attributed to him, this prayer is not his. It cannot be traced before a 1912 French devotional bulletin (La Clochette) and was only linked to Francis around 1918–1927; it appears nowhere in his authentic writings. His genuine prayers include the Canticle of the Creatures, the Prayer before the Crucifix, and the Praises of God written on Mount La Verna.

Are the stories of Francis preaching to the birds and taming the wolf of Gubbio true?+

These are beloved tradition rather than documented fact. The sermon to the birds comes from his earliest biographers (Thomas of Celano), who blend history with devotion, and the wolf of Gubbio appears only in the 14th-century Fioretti, roughly a century after his death. What rests on unusually firm ground is his own surviving writings and events like his 1219 meeting with Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil at Damietta, independently attested by the contemporary chronicler Jacques de Vitry.

Sources & further reading+

Thomas of Celano, *First Life of St. Francis (Vita Prima)*, 1228/29, and *Second Life*, c. 1247 — earliest biographies, commissioned around the canonization; supports the conversion, leper episode, Greccio, La Verna/stigmata, sermon to the birds · reliability high for outline, medium/hagiographic in miraculous detail.
Francis of Assisi, own writings** (Testament, Canticle of the Creatures, Earlier & Later Rules, Admonitions, Praises of God, Prayer before t — the public-domain English translation used for the prose prayers and quotations · reliability high (established scholarly edition).
Bonaventure, *Legenda Maior*, c. 1260 — the official later biography; supports the standard narrative but harmonizes and idealizes · reliability medium.
Jacques de Vitry, letters/*Historia Occidentalis*, c. 1220s — contemporary crusade chronicler; independently attests Francis at Damietta and the meeting with the Sultan · reliability high.
Augustine Thompson, *Francis of Assisi: A New Biography*, 2012 — modern critical scholarship that separates documented history from later legend · reliability high.
The Little Flowers of St. Francis (Fioretti), 14th c. — beloved devotional tales (wolf of Gubbio, etc.), written a century later · reliability legend.
Franciscan Archive / Franciscan Media — origin of the "Peace Prayer" — documents that the "Make me an instrument of your peace" prayer first appears in 1912 (*La Clochette*) and is not by Francis · reliability high (for the negative attribution).