On the Road with Francis of Assisi (25 page)

Pope Honorius III agreed in his meeting with Francis and, at Francis’s request, named Ugolino, the bishop of Ostia, as the official protector of what had begun, simply, as the Penitents from Assisi. “The era of sweet evangelical anarchy was over and done with,” writes Julien Green in
God’s Fool.

Francis did win some important concessions from Ugolino and the Pope. Honorius formally approved the secular Franciscan Third Order and informally lifted the “privilege” of property thrust on Clare. Clare won other concessions from Ugolino herself: A few friars were quietly permitted to return to collect alms for the Poor Clares, and the sisters resumed their charitable work in the neighborhoods outside their monasteries.

But there was no room for Francis and his zealous leadership in the newly official order. Whereas Francis had answered only to Christ, the new order would answer to the Pope. Francis knew he had to abdicate to make room for a new, more efficient leader, preferably a lawyer. The Pope knew it, too. So did Ugolino.

“From now on, I am dead as far as you are concerned,” Francis announced to the stunned friars gathered in Assisi on September 29, 1220, for their annual meeting. “But I present to you my brother, Peter of Catania, whom we shall all obey, you and me.” And with that, Francis stepped down as leader of the movement he had begun twelve years before with his first two converts.

He did retain some authority, however. The Pope and Ugolino had given him permission to write the order’s official, new Rule. It was a task that came close to breaking his heart.

The modern Adriatic port of
Ancona, whence Francis first sailed for the Holy Land and was shipwrecked instead.

The gleaming travertine-paved Piazza del Popolo in Ascoli Piceno, with the imposing church of
St. Francis in the background. Francis was mobbed when he preached in Ascoli.

The incomprehensible pinnacle of
San Leo, where Francis crashed a noble’s party and was given the mountain of
La Verna.

The runaway Clare thwarted her furious uncle at the monastery church of
San Paolo delle Abbadesse near
Assisi. This is how it looks now.

A triumphant Muslim warrior in Fariskur, Egypt, where, during the Fifth Crusade, Francis offered to walk over hot coals to peacefully convert the Sultan. He failed.

Francis recuperated from his Egyptian ordeal on the Isola del Deserto in the Venice lagoon. Here he decided to resign as head of
the Franciscan Order.

On a preaching tour of southern Italy, Francis summoned a crowd in Bari by ringing this bell, now enshrined here in the church of
Santa Maria degli Angeli. We ring it, too.

Francis reenacted the first live nativity in a cave in this extensive, reconstructed sanctuary of
Greccio. He also performed many miracles here.

Francis received the stigmata in the rocky wildness of
La Verna and lived thereafter in excruciating pain.

His stone bed, strewn with pilgrim
s
’ offerings, at the hermitage of
Monte Casale, near Sansepolcro, where the weakened Francis rested on the way home from La Verna.

The Pope ordered Francis to go to the important medieval city of
Rieti for treatment of
the eye disease he had contracted in Egypt. The Pope’s doctors failed.