Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226) was an Italian friar, deacon, and founder of the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans), whose radical embrace of apostolic poverty and itinerant preaching reshaped popular piety across the Latin West. Born to a prosperous merchant family in Assisi, he underwent a dramatic conversion in his early twenties — a gradual process from c. 1205 through his public renunciation of his inheritance before the bishop of Assisi in 1206 — and received informal oral approval of his small brotherhood from Innocent III around 1209–1210. He composed the Canticle of the Creatures (c. 1224), one of the earliest surviving literary works in Italian with a known author, as a hymn of praise for creation, and his Testament set out his vision of Franciscan life shortly before his death. He is traditionally said to have received the stigmata at La Verna in 1224, making him the first person in recorded Christian history for whom this phenomenon is formally attested. Canonized in 1228 by Pope Gregory IX, he became one of the most beloved and influential figures in Western Christian history, his legacy shaping mendicant spirituality, Franciscan Marian piety, and the Christian understanding of poverty and creation care for centuries.