Francis' Nudity: Historical reflection on the stripping of the Poor Man of Assisi

By Marco Bartoli

A young man arrives in the public square to confront his father and his city for its violence and greed. He wants off the social grid. In a dramatic gesture of renunciation, he takes off all his clothes and hands them back to his father and walks away, in search of a new identity and purpose with his God. In this insightful and inspiring book, Bartoli explores the meaning of Francis' gestures of nudity from his moment of conversion to his ritual of death. They are a window into a life of hope and suffering, loss and peace, a man who uses his nudity to tell his struggle for acceptance by the God that he loves so well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Franciscan Institute Publications
• Release date: Apr 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781576594483

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INTRODUCTION

When Pope Francis first visited Assisi on October 4, 2013, he met with a group of poor people in the Bishop’s Hall. On that occasion the pope said:

Here Francis divested himself of everything, before his father, before the Bishop, and the people of Assisi. It was a prophetic gesture, and it was also an act of prayer, an act of love and of trust to the Father who is in Heaven. With this gesture Francis made his choice: the choice to be poor. That is not a sociological, ideological choice, it is a choice to be like Jesus, to imitate him, to follow him to the end. Jesus is God stripped of his glory. We read in St. Paul: Christ Jesus, who was in the form of God, stripped himself, and made himself like us, and in this humiliation came to die on a cross (cf. Phil 2:6-8). Jesus is God, but he was born naked, he was placed in a manger, and he died naked and crucified. Francis stripped himself of everything, of his worldly life, of himself, to follow his Lord, Jesus, to be like him. Bishop Guido understood this act and immediately rose, embraced Francis and covered him with his cloak, and was ever after his helper and protector. The renunciation of St. Francis tells us simply what the Gospel teaches: following Jesus means putting him in first place, stripping ourselves of the many things that we possess that suffocate our hearts, renouncing ourselves, taking up the cross and carrying it with Jesus. Stripping ourselves of prideful ego and detaching ourselves from the desire to possess, from money, which is an idol that possesses. We are all called to be poor, to strip us of ourselves; and to do this we must learn how to be with the poor, to share with those who lack basic necessities, to touch the flesh of Christ! The Christian is not one who speaks about the poor, no! He is one who encounters them, who looks them in the eye, who touches them. I am here not to make news, but to indicate that this is the Christian path, the path St. Francis followed. St. Bonaventure, speaking of the renunciation of St. Francis, writes: Thus, then, the servant of the Most High King was left despoiled, that he might follow the Lord Whom he loved. And adds that in this way Francis was saved from the shipwreck of the world.¹

Thanks to Bishop Mons. Sorrentino,² that place has finally become a shrine and a place of pilgrimage.³ Pope Francis, in a letter dated April 16, 2017, blessed the creation of the new shrine dedicated to the stripping of St. Francis in the city of Assisi. In the letter, the pope recalls his visit to Assisi in 2013:

I recall quite well the emotion of my first visit to Assisi. Having chosen the name of Francis as the inspirational ideal of my pontificate, the Room of Renunciation (Stripping⁴) made me relive with particular intensity that moment in the Saint’s life.⁵

But how exactly can we interpret the gesture that took place in the piazza of Assisi? Pope Francis, as we have seen, described it as a prophetic gesture, but also as an act of prayer and an act of love. That gesture was probably all these things put together. In any case, the stripping of Francis is, even today, a gesture that speaks. It is capable of questioning men and women of different cultures and traditions.

Still, despite its extraordinary ability to communicate, the act of stripping does not seem to have been the subject of a thorough study of the sources that transmitted the story.⁶ This lacuna is striking because it has been some years since historians of the Middle Ages have highlighted the importance that gestures had in the cultures of those centuries. In a masterful work, the result of the valuable research of the Ecole des Hauts Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Jean-Claude Schmitt wrote in 1990:

Among themselves, as well as with God, in order to communicate, pray, or challenge themselves, the people [of the Middle Ages] do not cease making gestures, putting their whole person (body and soul) into them. They granted their gestures the whole value of their beliefs, of their sworn faith, of their social dignity, even entrusting to them on certain occasions, their own destiny, before and after death. There can be no doubt that, in such a culture, the study of gestures be they the most solemn and the most sacred gestures, and even the most common and repetitive gestures, the most unconscious and routine gestures, allows the historian to penetrate deeply into the functioning of society.⁷

The study of Francis’ gesture on the piazza of Assisi, in front of the bishop, his father and the crowd of fellow citizens, can perhaps help to grasp an important aspect of the culture of women and men in the thirteenth century and certainly can make a significant contribution to the understanding of the later developments in his life. Francis’ stripping was not an isolated gesture. The hagiographic sources speak of numerous strippings, before and after the gesture in the piazza of Assisi. It starts with meeting with the beggars in St. Peter’s Piazza in Rome, when Francis was still a young merchant, and ends with the final stripping, at the point of death, as told by Thomas of Celano in the Memoriale:

(When he had been brought there to St. Mary of the Portiuncula), He (Francis) showed by his example of virtue that he had nothing in common with the world.

As he was wasted by that grave illness which ended all his sufferings, he had himself placed naked on the naked ground, so that in that final hour, when the Enemy could still rage, he might wrestle naked with the naked. The fearless man awaited triumph and, with hands joined, held the crown of justice. Placed on the ground and stripped of his sackcloth garment, he lifted up his face to heaven as usual, and, totally intent upon that glory, he covered the wound on his right side with his left hand, so no one would see it. Then he said to his brothers: "I have done what is mine; may Christ teach you what is yours!"⁸

In this way, a path of stripping is configured for Francis; one that runs throughout his entire life. Other stripping episodes can be added to the three most important episodes, in Rome on the churchyard of St. Peter, in Assisi in front of the bishop, and the Porziuncola at the time of his death. These episodes mark his entire biographical path. Therefore, it can be said that stripping is one of the keys to understanding the entirety of the saint of Assisi’s personal life. A reflection on Francis’ intentions and the interpretations that were produced immediately after his death represent a necessary step to fully understand the story of the Poor Man (Poverello) of Assisi.

The following pages, without any pretense of completeness, would like to open the way to those who want to deepen this topic.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study was born thanks to the invitation of Mons. Sorrentino, Bishop of Assisi, to participate in the final round table of the Inaugural Week of the Shrine of the Stripping (Renunciation), May 22, 2017. I would like to thank him for encouraging me to reflect on such an important subject.

This small book was born from that intervention: the main merit is that of my wife Paola, who prompted me to redact what was said on that occasion and then reviewed the manuscript.

Finally, I would like to thank my dear friend Jacques Dalarun, to whom I turned for a final re-reading of the text. As always, his advice was invaluable.

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¹ Pope Francis, Meeting with the Poor assisted by Caritas: Address of Pope Francis, in The Holy See: Francis Speeches (Assisi, October 4, 2013). https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/october/documents/papa-francesco_20131004_poveri-assisi.html

² Cf. Domenico Sorrentino, Bishop of Assisi – Nocera Umbra – Gualdo Tadino, The Shrine of Renunciation: Pastoral Letter (Assisi, 25 December 2016), Christmas of the Lord. The Italian original follows the preference given by Mons. Sorrentino for the use of the word spogliazione, rather than the more usual, and perhaps more literary, spoliazione.

³ The bishop’s reflections were gathered in a small volume enriched by the images of Giotto and Sermei: Domenico Sorrentino, Accomplices of the Spirit. The Young Francis and Bishop Guido. A Meditation (Perugia: Edizioni Frate Indovino, 2011). These reflections were substantiated by a study that published a few years earlier by a medieval scholar originally from Assisi, Nicolangelo D’Acunto, who had identified in Guido I a bishop who, despite being fully immersed in the mentality of his time, as evidenced by his initial misunderstanding of the motives that drive Francis to a life of hardship and sacrifice, is finally open to the novelty embodied by the Poverello. Nicolangelo D’Acunto, Il Vescovo Guido Oppure i Vescovi Guido? Cronotassi Episcopale Assisana e Fonti Francescane, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modernes 108, no. 2 (1996): 479–524.

⁴ Translator’s note. The literal translation of the Italian name of the Hall is the Stripping Hall but to avoid any connection to contemporary use of the word stripper, Bishop Sorrentino acquiesced to the use of the word Renunciation instead of Stripping in the English title for the Hall.

⁵ Pope Francis, Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the bishop of Assisi to mark the Inauguration of the Shrine of Renunciation, in The Holy See: Francis Letters. https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2017/documents/papa-francesco_20170416_santuario-spogliazione-assisi.html.

⁶ A relative work on the subject is that of Richard C. Trexler, Naked Before the Father: The Renunciation of Francis of Assisi (New York – Bern – Frankfurt am Main – Paris: Peter Lang, 1989). In this regard we find the observations of Alessandro Barbero, La rinuncia di Francesco all’eredità paterna, Studi Medievali XXXI, no. 2 (1990): 837-851. To this we can add Jean Lacroix, L’aventure vestimentaire dans les écrits de saint François d’Assise et de ses disciples et épigones (XIIIe siècle), in Le Nu et le Vêtu au Moyen Âge (XIIe-XIIIe siècles), Senefiance, vol. 47 (Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires