CHAPTER 2
Sultan al-Malik al-Kāmil Naser ad-Din abu al-Ma’ali Muhammad (c. 1177–1238) must have grown weary of martyrs. The Coptic community of Egypt claimed that at least two Copts who had converted to Islam were executed after appearing before the sultan and demanding to be allowed to reconvert to Christianity, a capital offense: John of Phanajōit (c. 1210) and a weaver named Asad (c. 1217).1 The two Copts were little known after their deaths: no cult developed around either, and only a single copy of John’s passio survived.2 A few years after Asad and John, another would-be martyr stood before al-Kāmil, but unlike the previous two, he was neither a native of Egypt, nor did he end up dead as a result of the encounter. He was Francis of Assisi, and his encounter with the sultan became one of the most famous religious encounters of the Middle Ages, and one of the defining moments of Francis’s life.
We cannot know, of course, whether Asad, Francis, or John actually met al-Malik al-Kāmil. But what the reception of their stories tells us is that accounts of martyrdom were not always unequivocal demonstrations of piety. It is Francis after all, the only one of the three who did not die a martyr, whose encounter with the sultan became the most widely known. Nor were Asad, John, and Francis unique; in the imagination of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Christians at least, a number of would-be martyrs found themselves before caliphs, sultans, and qāḍīs (Islamic judges) around the same time. We are already familiar with the “Morocco Five”: the five Franciscans who preached before the Almohad caliph Yūsuf II (c. 1203–24) in Marrakesh and were executed by him. Their fourteenth-century passio also ascribed their motivation to “the desire for martyrdom.”3 While eventually canonized in 1481 and having a small cult of their relics in Portugal, the five martyrs of Morocco, like Asad and John, never gained widespread popularity. Giles of Assisi was one of the earliest of Francis’s companions, who “went to the Saracens at a certain time out of a desire to suffer martyrdom for the love of Christ,” according to his fourteenth-century vita.4 Like Francis, he survived, and became one of the beloved figures of the first generation of friars. He was beatified only in 1777, and though never canonized, his relics have enjoyed a modest cult in Perugia, where they were placed in a late-antique sarcophagus depicting the story of the prophet Jonah.5
While later generations tied these three near-martyrdoms to around 1220, the accounts ascribing to them a desire to die were written at different moments in Franciscan history. Thomas of Celano connected Francis’s visit to the sultan to a desire for martyrdom just a few years after Francis’s death, and only ten years after his voyage to Egypt. Giles of Assisi was a well-known figure within the early Franciscan movement, but the account of his voyage to convert Muslims and his near-martyrdom in Tunis did not show up until the later fourteenth century. The five martyrs of Morocco were mentioned soon after their deaths, in the vita of Anthony of Padua (c. 1232), but their names, an account of their deaths, and an explanation for their journey did not appear until the early fourteenth century. Thirteenth-century Franciscans evidently preferred their saints to be living pious lives, not dying pious deaths.
The life of Francis himself poses a particular challenge. Like the search for the historical Jesus, scholars of Francis have argued vociferously over how to read the hagiographic sources for his life, and which of them provides the best access to the historical Francis, rather than to a hagiographic construct.6 Scholars have generally found the saint’s desire for death to be unproblematic; on the one hand, it was a standard trope in the life of a saint, and on the other, it cohered to Francis’s strong sense of humility and desire to imitate Christ. The considerable body of scholarship devoted to Francis and his desire for martyrdom focuses almost exclusively on his visit to the sultan, and on placing that encounter in the context of the crusades and Muslim-Christian relations. Franciscans in the thirteenth century, on the other hand, found Francis’s desire and his failure to achieve it deeply troubling. Franciscan discourse on the desire for martyrdom was part of a tangled web of martyrial thinking that was for the most part a meditation on failure. Francis failed to become a martyr; other Franciscans succeeded in dying but failed to be canonized or to achieve the devotion earned by the martyrs of old. The stories of Francis’s journeys to achieve his desire, alongside his own writings on subjects connected to martyrdom, became a vehicle through which Franciscans grappled with the extraordinary ambition of Francis’s vision of a fraternity dedicated to calling the world to repentance in Christ.
“Going Among the Infidels”: Two Paths
Francis came before the sultan under much different pretenses than did John and Asad. They were accused of being renegade Muslims; to at least some, it seemed that they had converted to Islam, and their desire to return to Christianity (or deny that they had ever left it) was contrary to Islamic law. Their story was similar to the many stories of the neomartyrs who had gone before them. What was Francis doing before the sultan? Thomas of Celano characterized the saint’s motivation for his journey to Egypt as a “burning desire for martyrdom,”7 but also made it clear that Francis came not to insult Islam or provoke the sultan to execute him, but to preach the Christian message of truth.
Francis’s audience before the sultan has become a central moment in the saint’s life in part because it encapsulates so many powerful and at times contradictory elements of Francis’s own religious desires and those of the larger Christian world. At the same time, the story exemplifies the historiographic difficulty of separating the man from the saint. Can we trust Thomas’s explanation for why he went to Egypt? Can we discern what Francis was hoping to achieve?
While Francis did not write about his trip to Egypt himself, we do have his own words addressing the place of martyrdom and evangelization in the values of the brotherhood he had established. The choice of Francis to confront al-Kāmil in the midst of a crusade has moved many historians to wonder whether the man from Assisi understood his peaceful preaching as a rebuke to the violence of the crusade.8 As I will discuss below, Francis tried to confront the Almohad caliph in similar circumstances following the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. The saint more likely understood his efforts as working in concert with the crusade. Francis discussed preaching to infidels and Saracens as well as the possibility of martyrdom when he composed the first rule in 1209 (often called a “life-program,” a propositam vitae, rather than a formal rule) in response to the initial approval of the order by the pope, but that early rule, if it in fact existed, is now lost.9 The second rule, the Regula non bullata, was written in 1221 to govern an order that had already grown into thousands of friars. In this rule, we can hear the voice of Francis, though he certainly did not compose it alone.
The writing of a formal rule for his community was a decisive moment for Francis and his movement. It was a privilege few others enjoyed. The Fourth Lateran Council had banned the recognition of new rules; Dominic de Guzmán had to employ a modified version of the Rule of Saint Augustine for the Dominicans in 1216. But Francis had the favor of Pope Innocent III, who had given his unofficial support for the order in 1209. The rule was a constitution of sorts, which established the institutional framework of the order, but it was also a code of values that Francis hoped his brothers would live by. By the time the Regula non bullata was composed, the community had grown to such an extent that Francis no longer knew most of the friars, even in Italy. It was in this sense no longer a single community, but a collection of them, and the rule was to be the lodestone that steered them all in the same direction.
Francis devoted an entire chapter of the rule explicitly to the question of preaching to non-Christians, particularly Muslims. No other rule placed such emphasis on “going among the Saracens and other non-believers,” as Francis phrased it. The term “mission” in this sense was written into the DNA of the order. The rule offered two possible ways of pursuing such a journey. “One way,” the rule counseled, “is not to engage in arguments or disputes but to be subject to every human creature for God’s sake (1 Pet. 2:13)and to acknowledge that they are Christians.”10 The brothers who thus felt called to work among the Muslims should truly be minores (that is, “little ones”), and embody the principal Franciscan virtue of humility. They should convince Muslims of the superiority of Christianity not through preaching or speech, but through the humble mien appropriate to those who serve a humble and crucified God. No matter where they may be, Francis reminded his brothers, “they have given themselves and abandoned their bodies to the Lord Jesus Christ. For love of Him, they must make themselves vulnerable to their enemies, both visible and invisible, because the Lord says: “Whoever loses his life because of me will save it in eternal life.”11 Following this was an assemblage of New Testament quotations, what we might call a set of Franciscan beatitudes, which includes both Matthew’s injunction to flee to another town when persecuted, and also the injunction “Do not fear those who kill the body.”12
The rule offered a second way as well: “to announce the Word of God, when they see it pleases the Lord, in order that [unbelievers] may believe in almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit…. and be baptized and become Christians because no one may enter the kingdom of God without being reborn of water and the Holy Spirit.”13 This second path recognized the link between preaching and conversion; infidels must hear the word of God in order to be saved. This path placed conversion at the center of the friar’s activities, but on a practical level it exposed the friars to the greatest possibility of being killed. Encouraging Muslims to abandon their faith and embrace Christianity was a capital offense under Islamic law; denigrating Islam and its prophets was equally so. Yet it was also the path that took conversion and evangelization most seriously. This would appear to be how Francis conceived of his visit to al-Kāmil. Of course, the ambiguous phrase “if it pleases the Lord” left room for all sorts of interpretations. Did insulting Muhammad please the Lord? Did God look with favor upon those who sought out death?
The two paths present strikingly different conceptions of what the Franciscan mission was, and what it should achieve, as well as the capacity of “infidels” to achieve salvation. The first path, the path of patient endurance and humility, embodied one vision of who the Franciscans were. The Franciscan way of life itself was the source of transformation; the humility of the friars and their fidelity to the apostolic life of poverty would inspire Muslims to become Christians. This was the way Francis had attracted his first followers and built the early community around Assisi. The second path was hallowed by centuries of Christian tradition, and was imagined as the method that the apostles themselves employed in establishing the earliest Christian churches in the first century of Christianity. But it also considered conversion to be a process that required confrontation, particularly in the context of Islam. The friar cannot “subject himself to every human creature”; he must spur his audience to act contrary to the law and to participate in an act that juridically transferred them from one community to another. While the path did not insist on the need to denounce Islam, such a denunciation was implicit in the necessity to distinguish one tradition from the other. Yet this was the path that allowed the friar to exercise his role as preacher.14
The two paths also imagined the intended recipients differently. The first path placed the friar in the midst of an infidel community; a shared humanity was assumed, and the humility of the friar was to turn the hearts and minds of those around him to a recognition of their sinfulness and a desire to make right their relationship with God. The second path, on the other hand, envisioned the Muslims (and other infidels) as separated from the friars by the barriers of belonging. Only by undergoing the ritual of baptism could the infidel join the community and gain access to the salvation the friar had already secured.
The penultimate chapter of the rule did not address an issue of organization or behavior as the other chapters did, but was a general admonition to the friars, urging upon them the fundamental Franciscan virtue of humility and tying it to martyrdom. Francis urged his followers to call friends “those who unjustly inflict upon us distress and anguish, shame and injury, sorrow and punishment, martyrdom and death.” In contrast, the friars are urged to “hate our body with its vices and sins.”15 Thomas of Celano described the same love of humility as central to the poverello’s own life. The chapter encourages martyrological thinking in more subtle ways as well. When Francis cited the Gospels—“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10:32); “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8)—he was not just making a claim for the Christian monopoly on salvation; he was quoting the monastic liturgy for the celebration of a martyr.16 Was martyrdom the ultimate expression of humility? In the Regula non bullata, Francis implicitly suggested that it was so. While the rule did not encourage martyrdom directly, it encouraged a disregard for the fate of the body and a reciprocal elevation of the values of humility and subordination, which we might consider to be the psychosocial building blocks of the martyr’s perspective.17
Despite Francis’s labor in crafting it, the Regula non bullata was rejected by the pope, though approved by the order itself in a general meeting in 1221. To satisfy the pope and the cardinal-protector, Francis wrote a new rule in 1223, which was shorter, more legalistic, and less lyrical, and shorn of many of its biblical quotations. This rule gave the friars no direction on how to conduct missions to the infidels; it only mandated that they receive permission from their superiors before going. The lengthy admonition on humility in the Regula non bullata also largely disappeared in the later rule; a small portion of it was preserved in chapter 10. The language most evocative of martyrdom was removed. Why the shift in tone between the two rules? Certainly, it was part of a greater difference between the two: the second rule generally emphasized hierarchy and obedience, minimizing the emotional language that might lead a friar to his own conclusions of how best to live a Franciscan life. But the removal of the language of martyrdom may also have been a reaction to both Francis’s journey to Egypt and the death of the Morocco Five. Nevertheless, the chapter of the Regula bullata that describes friars going among the Saracens, in the opinion of Bonaventure, ministergeneral of the order, “opened the way for those thirsting for martyrdom, teaching them to join themselves to the infidels, leaving their homes.”18
The Regula non bullata continued to be influential; Hugh of Digne (d. c. 1254–57), provincial minister of Provence, used it extensively in his commentary on the rule, as did Angelo Clareno.19 Later commentators discussed evangelizing the infidels in the context of Francis’s injunctions in the Regula non bullata.20 But Francis’s two paths were controversial, even within the order.21 Hugh of Digne, though generally encouraging a rigorist interpretation of Franciscan values, felt it necessary to caution in his commentary on the rule that “the desire for martyrdom is not achieved hastily but rather prudently. We should strive for death for Christ, and should flee what is planned.”22 He further reminded his brothers (quoting Paul) that “Christ sent us not to baptize but to preach,” though Francis explicitly mentioned baptizing in the Regula non bullata.23 Still later, the anonymous Speculum perfectionis (c. 1318) included a brief description of the two paths, stating, “Francis believed that the highest obedience, that in which flesh and blood had no part, was when men should go by divine inspiration among the Saracens or the infidels, either for the good of their fellows, or for the desire for martyrdom, and he judged that to seek this was right.”24 Here, the two choices of the would-be martyr were categorized differently; instead of method, motivation was the means of distinguishing the two paths.
The two rules come into even sharper relief when we realize that they were written shortly after Francis returned from Egypt. Do the rules help illuminate what Francis himself was doing in Egypt? If we take the Regula non bullata as our guide, Francis understood his journey as a dangerous one—he was a lamb going among wolves. The saint pursued the second path, the path of preaching and evangelization. While this path enabled the infidel to hear the word of God, it was not only about saving the Saracen; proclaiming the word of God before others helped ensure one’s own salvation as well, as the Gospel citations attest.25 Indeed, the main thrust of chapter 16 of the Regula non bullata was not saving others, but following the via apostolica of the true disciple. Whether one died as a martyr, converted infidels, or simply attested to the truth of God’s word, the friar most importantly ensured his own salvation, for “Whoever acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.”26 In this sense, Francis’s mission was indeed analogous to that of the crusaders in whose midst he arrived in Egypt—the greatest victory was the salvation of the self.
Death Denied: Francis as Frustrated Martyr
Francis was first described as a frustrated martyr by the friar Thomas of Celano. Pope Gregory IX had asked Thomas, who was from the town of Celano in the Abruzzi and a relative of the counts of Marsi, to write a vita following the saint’s canonization on 16 July 1228, and Thomas finished the vita in 1230, just four years after the saint’s death. It was the first attempt to provide a narrative of Francis’s life and explain the development of the order, and it profoundly shaped how Franciscans understood themselves; it is thus sometimes called the vita prima to distinguish it from other hagiographic material that Thomas composed. Thomas had joined the order about 1215, and as his writings show, he was well educated in theology and the monastic literary tradition. He, too, had been involved in the evangelistic fervor of the early Franciscan movement; Thomas was part of a delegation sent to Germany in 1221—not to convert infidels, but to inspire baptized Christians to a renewed love of God. He returned to Italy in 1223; we know little else about him. Thomas wrote just a few years after the saint’s death, and his account aimed both to promote Francis’s sanctity within the larger church, and to satisfy the desire of his brethren to memorialize their founder. Thomas was the first to list the three attempts by Francis to travel outside of Christendom and to ascribe the journeys to the saint’s desire to achieve martyrdom; like much of Thomas’s vita, these attempts became canonical parts of Francis’s life, recounted in other hagiographic texts and illustrated in depictions of the saint’s life.27 Yet Thomas was quite ambivalent about these endeavors; they were not straightforward evidence of the founder’s sanctity as many have assumed.
Thomas devoted an entire chapter to Francis’s “desire to undergo martyrdom,” gathering the stories together out of their chronological context. Nevertheless, he was uncertain of how to characterize that desire. He began in verse, evoking martyrdom as a kind of knightly heroism:
burning with divine love,
the blessed father Francis was always eager
to try his hand at brave deeds (fortia),
and walking in the way of God’s commands
with heart wide-open,
he longed to reach the summit of perfection.28
Like an Arthurian knight setting out on a quest, Francis’s desire would lead him to travel to distant lands, to grueling hardship, and to an opportunity to display courage in the face of near-certain death.29
Francis’s desire, however, was repeatedly frustrated. Sometime around 1212, “Francis wished to take a ship to the region of Syria to preach the Christian faith and repentance to the Saracens and other non-believers,” but contrary winds prevented him from reaching his destination. Again motivated by “the burning desire for martyrdom,” Francis later traveled toward Morocco through Spain, hoping “to preach the gospel of Christ to the Miramolin (the Latin version of the caliphal title, Amir al-Mu’minīn) and his retinue,”30 but again he was thwarted—though this time it was not an accident of nature that stopped him, but God. Francis was so eager to die on this trip “that he would sometimes leave behind his companion on the journey and hurry ahead, intoxicated in spirit.”31 God, responding to the distant prayers of Thomas and other brothers, struck Francis with illness, forcing him to abandon his journey again.32 In doing so, Thomas claimed that God “withstood him to his face,”33 a biblical phrase that referred to an episode in which Paul rebuked Peter for separating himself from the uncircumcised, non-Jewish Christians.
It is a curious choice of language. Its original context gives us further understanding of what Thomas meant by it. Paul used it to describe his own actions in Antioch when he confronted Peter, who thus “stood condemned.” In the community of early Christians, Paul was a bit of an underdog, a recent convert who never knew Jesus during his lifetime, while Peter was one of the leaders of the community.34 By using this quote, Thomas aligned himself and the other friars with Paul, and Francis with the rebuked Peter. But it is God, in responding to the brothers’ prayers, who rebuked Francis. Francis, like Peter, may have been a saint, but this does not mean he never made mistakes—we need only to think of Peter’s denial of Jesus to know that. For Thomas, then, Francis’s desire for martyrdom in this instance was not a sign of sanctity, but a misguided desire that put the saint’s will in conflict with God’s and with his community.35 The rebuke specifically focused on “separation”—in Peter’s case from the gentile Christians, and in Francis’s case from his brethren. The greater significance was, however, the separation that Francis’s desire threatened—to separate him permanently from the living. Both Francis and Peter, it seems, suffered from an overly developed sense of purity.
Francis’s third attempt (directed toward Egypt this time) followed the chapter meeting in 1219 when the order began to put its dream of worldwide evangelization into practice, and Francis was determined to participate. While Francis finally arrived at his destination, this venture too was a failure, where once again Francis’s desire did not align with God’s. In describing this journey, Thomas did not emphasize Francis’s desire for martyrdom (though he still included it in a chapter dedicated to the subject), but rather his patience in the face of his suffering at the hands of the Egyptian soldiers. Again, however, God did not fulfill his desire for martyrdom, but did allow him to preach before the sultan. Instead of blocking Francis, God redirected him; he was “reserving for him the prerogative of a unique grace.”36
Francis’s final attempt at martyrdom was different from his earlier attempts in two ways: first, in the way that Thomas characterized it, and second, in the reasons for its lack of success. Francis still sought to carry out the “the holy impulse of his soul”—presumably martyrdom—but the achievement Thomas praised was that he “was not afraid to present himself to the sight of the Sultan of the Saracens,” again evoking the notion of chivalric bravery in the midst of a crusade. The hagiographer exulted, “With great strength of soul, he spoke to him [the sultan], with eloquence and confidence he answered those who insulted the Christian law.”37 Thomas emphasized Francis’s power of speaking, casting religious debate as a kind of proxy warfare. The court of the sultan appeared to be full of threats; the soldiers manhandled Francis and his companion, and he “was ill-treated by many with a hostile spirit and a harsh attitude.” By the sultan, however, “he was received very graciously.” The sultan first mistook him for the typical visitor who appeared in his court, and offered him gifts, “trying to turn his mind to worldly things.” Al-Kāmil soon realized, however, that a man such as Francis did not want royal gifts; “overwhelmed with admiration, he recognized him as a man unlike any other. He was moved by his words and listened to him very willingly.”38 Nevertheless, the sultan did not convert.
What was amiss with Francis’s desires and actions? Why did his endeavors fail to win him either converts or martyrdom, and as such, why did Thomas include them in his hagiography? Thomas depicted Francis’s desire to follow in Christ’s footsteps as two distinct vocations. One was martyrdom, which Thomas called “the holy impulse of his soul.” The second was the call to preach. Francis understood this calling when he heard the reading of the gospel passage at Saint Mary of the Portiuncula in which Jesus instructed that his disciples “should not possess gold or silver or money, or carry on their journey a wallet or a sack, nor bread nor a staff, nor to have shoes nor two tunics, but that they should preach the kingdom of God and penance”—a life of preaching which was intimately linked to a life of poverty. Upon discussing the text with the priest, Francis declared, “This is what I want. This is what I seek, this is what I desire with all my heart.”39 When Francis preached, he was filled with the ability to move his listeners in unexpected ways. Thomas recounted that “he used to view the largest crowd of people as if it were a single person, and he would preach fervently to a single person as if to a large crowd…. Sometimes he would be filled with such great eloquence that he moved the hearts of his hearers to astonishment.”40
Thomas understood the desire for martyrdom to be more than just a sign of his leader’s sanctity; it symbolized Francis’s spiritual aspirations for himself and for his followers. The apostles, the model for the Franciscans, were believed to have all died as martyrs (with the exception of the long-lived John). Thomas also emphasized that Francis’s religious calling was inextricably linked to persecution and suffering. When the townspeople of Assisi pelted Francis with mud and stones, thinking him mad because of his changed demeanor after his conversion, Thomas commented that “in vain do the wicked persecute those striving for virtue, for the more they are stricken, the more fully will they triumph.”41 Likewise, his father’s rage toward Francis led the saint to “declare he would gladly suffer anything for the name of Christ,”42 and that he was “eager to despise his own life.”43 The name that Francis chose for the order, the Order of the Lesser Brothers, reflected the importance of humility; as Thomas explained, “They were truly lesser, who by being subject to all, always sought the position of contempt.”44
This same logic of inversion had been a crucial part of the logic of the martyr. To be humble was to despise or to consider insignificant one’s own life and self; to die was to give up one’s earthly life and self in the ultimate expression of humility. The early friars’ desire for humility led them to seek “to be where they would suffer persecution of their bodies rather than where their holiness would be known or praised.”45 Martyrdom thus became the ultimate expression of Franciscan humility, and the desire for martyrdom became part of an expression of humility. Yet, in a curious manner, martyrdom as a trope of humility turns the traditional logic of martyrdom on its head. For early Christians, martyrdom was the assertion of power from a position of powerlessness. Early Christians revered their martyrs because they allowed them to claim control of the body and spirit when imperial authority sought to strip them of it. Later Christians saw in the martyrs the inevitable triumph of Christianity over those who opposed it. For Franciscans, martyrdom (and the desire for it) was the voluntary surrender of authority over one’s own body, as Christ had surrendered his immortal self to suffer and die. It thus began from a position of power and moved toward powerlessness. Even more paradoxically, martyrdom itself led to “their holiness being known and praised,” and to the divine power that the Franciscans foreswore.
The desire for martyrdom was problematic in another way. The hagio-graphic topos of the desire for martyrdom developed in the fourth century as the opportunity for martyrdom itself began to wither away, at least for orthodox Christians. Its potency came from the fact that martyrdom was no longer an option. In the thirteenth century, pious men did have the opportunity to seek out martyrdom, as the stories of Francis and the Moroccan martyrs attest. What, then, was the significance of the desire for martyrdom when the possibility of martyrdom was in fact at hand? The order could never quite decide.
Did Francis go to infidel lands to preach or to die? Perhaps it is a false dichotomy; perhaps Francis sought both, just as the order honored both at different moments. Thomas kept the two desires in tension; even as preaching became the mark of the lesser brothers and part of their apostolic mission, and “was producing choice fruit in abundance,” Thomas insisted that “it did not stifle Francis’s highest purpose, the burning desire for martyrdom.”46 It was easier to keep the desire rather than its achievement in balance with the active engagement with the world that preaching represented. Properly, the desire for martyrdom should be coupled with preaching and transformation of the world—yet Francis in Egypt arguably failed on both counts; he neither gained the glory of martyrdom, nor did the sultan become a Christian through his preaching. Having tempted his audience with the delectable possibility of the conversion of one of the most powerful political leaders in the Islamic world, Thomas concluded his chapter on the desire for martyrdom by switching to a different, seemingly unrelated, topic: “In all this, God did not fulfill his desire, reserving for him the prerogative of a unique grace.”47
What was the “unique grace” that Thomas suggested Francis had been saved for? The stigmata, the physical wounds of the Crucifixion miraculously appearing on his hands, feet, and side, were a wonder that Francis was the first to experience.48 If martyrdom was the ultimate expression of the vita apostolica, then the stigmata were the ultimate expression of Francis’s attempt to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.49 Seeking to understand God’s will for him, Francis had once used the ancient method of bibliomancy, as Augustine himself had done; he opened the Bible at random, and read. The book fell open to the story of Jesus’ passion repeatedly.50 Francis then “understood that he would have to enter into the kingdom of God through many trials, difficulties, and struggles.”51 Some time later, he received a vision of a man with wings like a seraph, outstretched on a cross.52 As he contemplated the meaning of the vision, “signs of the nails began to appear on his hands and feet, just as he had seen them a little while earlier on the crucified man hovering over him.”53
The unique grace Francis received from God was to suffer as Christ suffered on the cross.54 At his death, Thomas called the stigmata “signs of martyrdom,”55 again reminding his readers of the link between “the unique grace” and Francis’s desire for martyrdom. Thomas hinted that the proper attitude toward martyrdom was rewarded by a superior form of it—one that did not result in bodily death, but one that metaphysically allowed Francis to participate in the suffering of Christ’s death while still living. God thus denied Francis his desire to be martyred in the manner of the apostles, but gave him a form of suffering that heretofore had only been endured by God’s own son. It is a peculiar irony, however, that the Crucifixion killed Jesus, making him in effect the first martyr (and one who arguably did not desire it, at least according to Luke),56 while the reenactment of the Crucifixion on Francis did not kill him, despite his desire for martyrdom.
Thomas presented Francis as a martyr in a third way as well: through the illnesses he suffered as he approached death. Toward the end of his life when he endured a series of debilitating illnesses that eventually killed him, one of his companions asked Francis “what he would prefer to endure: this long-lasting illness or suffering a martyr’s cruel death at the hands of an executioner.” Francis responded, “My son, whatever is more pleasing to the Lord my God to do with me and in me has always been and still is dearer, sweeter, and more agreeable to me. I desire to be found always and completely in harmony with and obedient to God’s will alone in everything.” Nevertheless, Francis admitted, “To suffer this illness, even for three days, would be harder for me than any martyrdom.”57 Thomas thus closed the gap between God’s plan for Francis, and Francis’s own desires. Martyrdom had been Francis’s desire, not God’s will. As he lay on his sickbed, Francis finally surrendered his will and sought only to follow God’s.
Francis’s desire for martyrdom was paradoxically both denied and fulfilled. While martyrdom represented the complete humility of the Franciscan way of life, Francis’s desire for it was both an expression of his love of humility, but also of self-will. God did not want Francis to be a martyr (at least in the conventional sense). While he was dying, Francis willingly accepted suffering, but Thomas made clear that this suffering was not what Francis desired, but what God did. Thus, Thomas’s treatment of martyrdom and the desire for it extended far beyond the three journeys of Francis. It was a persistent desire throughout the vita, which far from demonstrating Francis’s sanctity, instead revealed the saint’s lingering self-will, extinguished only as he lay suffering and dying at the end of his life.
This vita was not Thomas’s only hagiographic text devoted to Francis. In the decades that followed, Thomas continued to compose hagiographic material about his beloved founder, responding to the changing needs of the order. Perhaps the most influential work of Thomas was not the vita, but his adaptation of the vita for liturgical use. Thomas’s “Life of St. Francis” was written for the whole of Christendom, but the friars soon needed texts to be used in the annual celebration of their saint in their own churches and convents. Thomas himself adapted the vita he wrote for liturgical use, paring down Francis’s life to a few discrete episodes that could easily be read during a church service; a second office was written shortly after by Julian of Speyer, who also drew upon Thomas’s work. The episodes selected had the greatest influence on the shaping of Franciscan identity in the first generations of the order. Many friars did not read the Life of Francis, but all would have attended the yearly celebration of his sanctity. The two liturgies produced immediately after the saint’s elevation presented his desire for martyrdom in quite different ways. Thomas emphasized the importance of martyrdom in the Legend for the Use of the Choir, but gave it a different meaning than he had in the vita. The third reading emphasized the connection between martyrdom and the love of God, proclaiming that “because of his love for the Lord’s name, he loathed the world and wished to be released through the grace of martyrdom and to be with Christ.”58 In the vita, this rejection of the world was precisely what Thomas had critiqued. Francis’s trips to Morocco and Syria were then briefly mentioned; his desire to preach to infidels was sublimated to his desire for martyrdom. Yet the readings also show that in some ways Francis’s desire was misplaced, as Thomas had already hinted at in the vita. Martyrdom was a way for Francis to escape the tumbling world of flesh and desire, and unite himself with God. It was not out of desire to fulfill God’s will, for it was evident that Francis’s destiny was to remain in the world to found the order and inspire other Christians. The reading promoted the desire for martyrdom as a sign of Francis’s eagerness for God, but still categorized that desire as misguided.
The Divine Office assembled by Julian of Speyer sometime in the early 1230s was also based on Thomas’s vita, and it continued and simplified Thomas’s martyrological argument. Julian referred to Francis as a “martyr by desire” in the Benedictus antiphon, without specific reference to any one of his journeys. Julian also picked up on the links between martyrdom and the stigmata, which Thomas ignored in his office.59 Julian recounted that Francis “desired still to endure anew all the sufferings of body and all the agonies of mind so that every wish of the Divine Purpose might be more perfectly fulfilled in him.”60 Through “prophecy of the book,” that is, randomly opening the scriptures and reading, he came both times to the story of the passion of Christ. Francis was not taken aback by this; “in fact, he who had long yearned to be a martyr … disposed himself zealously to be all that he could bear for Christ.”61 Thus, Julian, in contrast to Thomas, showed that the desire for martyrdom was congruent with Francis’s desire to follow God’s will.62 Martyrdom was thus important for Julian for different reasons—not as a part of preaching to Saracens, but the desire itself, alone, was emphasized as a sign of sanctity. In doing so, he granted Francis the title that was so elusive in Thomas; instead of striving for martyrdom and never achieving it, Julian neatly dubbed Francis a martyr, worthy through that very desire which was unfulfilled in Thomas’s account. Most friars’ understanding of the life of their founder was shaped through liturgical commemorations such as these, and thus the desire for martyrdom became one of Francis’s primary characteristics in the early and mid-thirteenth century. The liturgical commemoration of the desire for martyrdom made it a powerful model for his friars to follow. The complexity that Thomas invested in martyrdom was smoothed out.
Martyrdom After Francis
The complex Franciscan relationship to martyrdom and the desire for it remained a potent but often subterranean river, spilling into open air only briefly; martyrdom and its values were often alluded to, but rarely were martyrs spoken of directly by name. According to Jordan of Giano (d. 1262), recalling his days as a young friar in Italy from his adopted home in Germany, Francis feared the story of the Moroccan martyrs might inspire love of glory rather than devotion to God, declaring “Everyone should glory in his own suffering and not in that of another.”63 While the stories of Francis’s desire for martyrdom continued to appear in accounts of the saint’s life, they were rarely cited as an inspiration in other texts or hagiographies. Franciscans were far more likely to cite the martyrs of Morocco. Ferdinand of Lisbon was moved by the sight of their bodies being returned to Coimbra in 1220 to leave the Augustinian canons and join a Franciscan convent. He too burned with desire for martyrdom and traveled to Morocco to preach to Muslims. Like Francis, he fell ill, and ended up in Italy, where he became the famous preacher Anthony of Padua, the second great saint of the Franciscan order.64 His professed name was taken from Anthony of Egypt, the first ascetic to desire martyrdom but never achieve it.
Clare of Assisi and other members of her community were clearly familiar with the story of the martyrs of Morocco as well, and saw the martyrs as embodying the Franciscan virtues they wished to imitate; like Anthony, Clare desired to be a martyr following their example.65 In Thomas de Papia’s Dialogus de gestis sanctorum fratrum minorum (c. 1245), the Moroccan martyrs appear again as the inspiration for Anthony of Padua’s life, but rather strangely in a discussion of Franciscan holy men, the martyrs were not considered worthy of an entry under their own names and on their own merits.66 Likewise, Thomas of Celano briefly mentioned martyrs in the introduction to his “Treatise on the Miracles of Saint Francis,” written some thirty years after his first vita (c. 1252); the martyrs were lined up alongside Franciscan saints as exemplars of the extraordinary accomplishments of the order, but were given no names or identifying characteristics.67 When Bernard of Bessa listed eminent Franciscans at the beginning of his Liber de laudibus, the only martyrs he thought worthy of inclusion were Stephen of Narbonne and Raymond of Carbona, two Franciscan inquisitors killed in 1242 by Cathars. He made no mention of the friars who died in Morocco or other thirteenth-century Franciscan martyrs, merely noting that “it would take too long to describe each of those who were martyred under the Saracens or heretics.”68 Martyrs were wonderful examples of Franciscan virtue in the abstract, but narratives and names were studiously avoided.
The martyrs of Morocco were the first but not the last Franciscans to die preaching the gospel among the infidels, but evidence for other thirteenth-century martyrs is even more scarce. Scholars have frequently cited the deaths of another group of seven friars who died in Ceuta in 1227; a letter preserved in a late fourteenth-century chronicle claims to have been written by one of the Franciscans, Daniel, while in prison. As Isabelle Heullant-Donat has argued, evidence suggests that these friars never existed; they were simply a duplication of the five martyrs of 1220.69 The two friars martyred in Muslim-ruled Valencia in 1231 were not mentioned until 1335.70 The thirteenth-century Salimbene called his fellow Franciscan Simon of Montesarchio a martyr; he died in the political struggle between Frederick II and the papacy, but this argument was not picked up by anyone else.71 Strikingly, the papacy made no effort to use these deaths in their propaganda against Frederick II, although (as I will discuss below), the papacy was particularly keen to promote those who were killed as part of the persecution of heretics (which Frederick was accused of being). Other Franciscans sought martyrdom, but like Francis, failed to achieve it. Adam of Oxford (d. c. 1230s), an English friar and scholar who wanted to preach among the Muslims, only made it as far as Barletta in Apulia, and died there. His grave became a miracle site, which was more attention than most friars who had actually died as martyrs received.72
Other thirteenth-century texts reminded the friars that martyrological values represented the ultimate expression of their desire to be minores, as first suggested in the Regula non bullata, but without commemorating specific martyrs. The early Franciscan text “The Sacred Exchange between Saint Francis and Holy Poverty” declared that “the kingdom of heaven truly belongs to those who, of their own will, a spiritual intention, and a desire for eternal goods, possess nothing of this earth. It is necessary for those who do not care for the goods of the earth to live for those of heaven”73—a concept that went back to Origen, if not earlier. The ideal Christian had nothing to do with earthly life; in “this present exile,” he or she was just waiting to return home to heaven. The text remains mysterious to modern scholars. Some early manuscripts contain the date of July 1227 for the text’s composition; the editor of the text, Stefano Brufani, however, doubted this claim.74 Likewise, some manuscripts offer Anthony of Padua or John of Parma as authors, though we have no conclusive evidence of when or by whom it was written. But it is clear that whoever wrote the “Sacred Exchange” tied martyrdom closely to the core Franciscan values of poverty and humility.
The “Sacred Exchange” offers exactly what the title promises—a meeting between the saint and “Lady Poverty,” the embodiment of the virtue of poverty and “the queen of the virtues.” Francis and his brothers sought her out, finding her living alone on top of a high mountain. Lady Poverty recited her life to the brothers, which began in Paradise with Adam. Speaking of early Christian martyrs, she told Francis that, “because they were comforted not a little by my words, they willingly accepted the iron tearing at their bodies and enthusiastically saw the sacred blood flowing from their flesh.”75 In a sense, a life of poverty was a drawn-out form of martyrdom, or at the very least a form of training for it; this argument is implicit in texts like the Regula non bullata, but Lady Poverty made the connection directly.
The friars learned that Lady Poverty had a sister, Lady Persecution, who “whenever she saw that some had become lukewarm in love, or a little forgetful of heavenly matters, or were setting their hearts on material goods, … immediately lifted her voice, immediately mobilized her army, and immediately filled the faces of my children with shame so that they would seek God’s name.”76 After the Peace of Constantine, however, Lady Persecution became separated from her sister, and as a result Christians attacked each other through war and competed in acquiring wealth. When Lady Poverty joined Francis and his companions in a meal, she was astonished to be served only crusts of barley bread and water. Delighting in their fidelity and return to the values of the early Christians, she told the friars that the angels and apostles exulted, and that “the martyrs rejoice in expecting that their own constancy in pouring out their sacred blood will be repeated.”77 Lady Poverty thus taught the friars that poverty, disregard for this world, persecution, and suffering were all entwined values, and that martyrdom was a fitting culmination of a life devoted to poverty. For the author of “The Sacred Exchange,” martyrdom presented none of the conundrums that it offered Thomas. The desire for martyrdom was synonymous with the desire for poverty and humility and thus encapsulated Franciscan values. In tying them together, the “Sacred Exchange” left little room for the Franciscans’ engagement in the world as preachers; Lady Poverty was clearly not a companion of evangelists. Was the call of the “Sacred Exchange” to martyrdom, requiring at least a pro forma commitment to preaching, or a call to strict asceticism and humility that led to death? Poverty is the central virtue, not martyrdom.
Resisting Martyrdom
The martyrial logic of extreme humility was sometimes resisted, even in the thirteenth century. The “Legend of the Three Companions” derived in large part from material written down by Francis’s early companions—Leo, Angelo, and Rufino—in response to a request by a Franciscan council in 1247 for recollections about Francis and the early order. The legend belonged to a body of literature written after Thomas’s first vita, which was intended to present Francis and his early companions as engaged together in an enterprise of mutual effort, in contrast to Thomas’s first account which privileged the charismatic Francis and his leadership. Furthermore, the “Legend” rejected the hierarchy of Franciscan values that underpinned martyrdom. “The gentle father (Francis) reproved his brothers who were too harsh with themselves, laboring too much in vigils and fasts, and the physical discipline. For certain of them did mortify themselves so severely in order that they might repress in themselves the lusts of the flesh that it seemed that they hated their very selves.”78 This moderation, and the suggestion that hatred of the body was misdirected piety, suggests a less radical dichotomy between the flesh and the soul, temporal life and eternal life, salvation and damnation than was expressed in other sources, such as the “Sacred Exchange,” the Regula non bullata, or even Thomas’s vita prima. Nor did the “Legend of the Three Companions” mention any of Francis’s attempts to preach to the Muslims, or any desire on Francis’s part, or on the part of any of the other friars, to be a martyr. Nevertheless, the account proclaimed: “Such charity did burn within them that it seemed easy to them to yield their bodies to death, not for the love of Christ alone, but also for the salvation of souls, even of the bodies of their brethren.”79 The potential for martyrdom here was grounded in charity, not a desire to be united with Christ—charity that drove the brothers to win the “salvation of souls.” Martyrdom, then, was a potential outcome of preaching, but not a goal in itself. Scholars have read these accounts as part of a yearning for a simpler time in the order, a reaction against the increasing political engagement of the order. But strikingly, these stories from the second generation suggest a Francis who did not desire martyrdom, and who led a brotherhood whose poverty and humility was a way of being in the world, rather than a way to transcend it. They were thus in many ways more compatible with the contemporary activities of the order than earlier accounts like that of Thomas.
Thomas of Celano also contributed to this second generation of narratives about Francis and his earliest companions, drawing upon the “Legend of the Three Companions” as well as another similar text, “The Assisi Compilation.” His “Remembrance of the Desire of the Soul,” also called the Vita secunda, focused, like the materials that he used, on the community rather than solely on the saint. Thus, Francis in this account went to Egypt with several companions; “they crossed the sea motivated by the fervor for martyrdom.”80 Thomas included the episode not as a part of an extended discussion of Francis’s desire for martyrdom, as in the Vita prima, but as a setup for his presence in the crusader camp in Damietta, where he prophesied the defeat of the crusader forces. The journey was not a sign of Francis’s sanctity, but a sign of the commitment of the early order. Like the “Legend of the Three Companions,” Francis told his companions that “it was just as much a sin to deprive the body without discernment of what it really needed as, prompted by gluttony, to offer it too much,”81 thus promoting a less severe division of the order from the world. Nevertheless, the “Remembrance” preserved one of the earliest descriptions of a Franciscan martyr. He was a lay brother who had joined the order at a young age, and was killed by “the Saracens.” Thomas gave neither his name, nor where he died, nor the date of his death, but preserved his last words to his companion, as he held the Franciscan rule in his hand: “Dear brother, I proclaim myself guilty before the eyes of Majesty of everything that I ever did against this holy Rule.”82 He was not credited with either the desire for martyrdom or the motivation to preach to Muslims. Instead, the narrative made being a Franciscan and following the rule synonymous with being a martyr.
Bonaventure and Martyrdom
Martyrdom and the desire for it was thus deeply problematic for thirteenth-century Franciscans. It suggested both humility and self-will, powerlessness but also a claim to authority, and it often advocated abandoning the world rather than saving it. This problem, tied to so many Franciscan values, was given a theological solution by Bonaventure, whose Legenda maior became the official hagiographical text of the saint; all others—including Thomas’s several vitae—were ordered to be destroyed by a Franciscan council in 1266. Like the “Sacred Exchange,” Bonaventure saw the friars as seeking out persecution; “in different parts of the world many insults were hurled against them as persons unknown and looked down upon, but true love of the Gospel of Christ had made them so patient, that they sought to be where they would suffer physical persecution rather than where their holiness was recognized and where they could glory in worldly honor.”83 For Thomas of Celano, the desire for martyrdom was an ambiguous sign of sanctity, a misplaced desire because of the implications of self-will and alienation from the world. For Bonaventure, Francis’s desire for martyrdom was but a symptom of his burning love of charity; “the poor man of Christ had nothing other than two small coins, namely his body and soul, which he could give away in generous charity.”84 Therefore, “he desired to offer to the Lord his own life as a living sacrifice in the flames of martyrdom so that he might repay Christ, who died for us, and inspire others to divine love.”85 With Bonaventure, the desire for martyrdom had become theological, an interpretation that drew upon the values embedded in the “Legend of the Three Companions.” Francis’s desire was no longer an expression of a desire to unite himself with God through death, but a desire to unite humanity to God, thus transforming the desire into another aspect of Francis’s Christomimesis. Bonaventure’s solution knitted together the disparate answers formulated over a half century of hagio-graphic wrestling with the desire for martyrdom and its complications. Thomas’s Vita prima emphasized the centrality of the desire, while the “Legend of the Three Companions” portrayed it as an expression of Francis’s willingness to die for others, and Thomas’s liturgical legend presented it as a rejection of the world and as devotion to Christ. Each reading was in some way problematic, but Bonaventure’s formulation brought all of them together in one theological construct.
Bonaventure retold the story of Francis’s three attempts at martyrdom as acts of charity and removed the sense of failure that hung over them. He thus announced that Francis was being preserved for greater things following Francis’s second attempt at martyrdom, his voyage through Spain to Morocco, rather than at the end of his third voyage, as Thomas had done. Unsurprisingly, he dropped Thomas’s quotation of scripture that God “withstood him to his face.” Furthermore, Bonaventure depicted the saint’s journey to Egypt as a success, showing al-Kāmil as being compelled by Francis’s teaching, but afraid to convert due to the reaction of his people. Francis thus did not fail as a preacher in Egypt; it was the fault of the Muslim sultan, who saw the truth but feared to follow it. Francis was thus truly blessed, for “the persecutor’s sword did not take away, and who yet did not lose the palm of martyrdom!”86 Where Thomas’s Francis failed to convert Muslims, Bonaventure described the effect of Franciscan poverty on an anonymous Muslim, who was moved to give alms. Bonaventure gushed, “O ineffable value of poverty, whose marvelous power moved the fierce heart of a barbarian to such sweet piety!”87 Persecution and the potential for martyrdom were not paths toward separation from the world, but means to transform it. In his Legenda minor, intended for liturgical use on the Octave of the Feast of Saint Francis, the desire for martyrdom was reduced to a single episode, in which God miraculously sustained Francis and his fellow travelers after his trip to Syria was thwarted. The episode thus demonstrated that “God was always within.”88
Franciscan Mysticism
Martyrdom became meaningful as a symbol of Franciscan identity and values in two ways; it signaled separation and even rejection of the world and, at the same time, humility in accepting death. More specifically, it seemed to be the most complete way in which a Christian could follow Christ; martyrdom was the closest one could come to crucifixion, the stigmata being bestowed only by God, not received as a result of human desire. Indeed, Ubertino da Casale (1305) understood Francis’s desire for martyrdom through the language of sacrifice; his body was a holocaust offered up to God. His desire was fulfilled in the stigmata, because like Jesus “mere human hands did not shed Francis’s blood; instead, Jesus with His most holy hands mentally and corporally martyred and wounded him with the pains and wounds of His most holy cross, so that the words of Hebrews might be applied to him: “Like the Son of God, He remains a priest forever.”89 By the later thirteenth century, the call for the Christian to conform to Christ was not through the literal self-sacrifice of martyrdom, but through mystical ascent and union with the crucified Christ. For Bonaventure, this was what Francis had achieved, and the result was the stigmata. The mystical meaning of the desire to die through martyrdom was not the rejection of the world, but a willingness to die for it, combining a love of God and a love of humanity. It was the desire to be free of sin and full of grace. The Bonaventurean desire for martyrdom did not lead to death, but to mystical ascent, and union with the Godhead.
Of course, the Franciscans were not the only ones thinking about martyrdom and desire for it in the thirteenth century. The most popular martyr of the thirteenth century was not a Franciscan, but a Dominican, Peter of Verona. He was assassinated in the course of his work as an inquisitor in Milan and came to be known simply as “Peter Martyr.” Innocent IV elevated him to sainthood less than a year after his death; his was the speediest sanctification on record to this day. Innocent canonized five other saints during his pontificate, all defenders of the church like Peter.90 Unsurprisingly, Dominicans also ascribed to Peter the desire for martyrdom. Even the founder of the order, Dominic de Guzmán, had “thirsted for martyrdom” while preaching to heretics in Toulouse,91 and mourned because “he was not worthy of the honor of martyrdom”92—according to two of his hagiographers. Like Francis, Peter was an “alter Christus.” Peter’s murder during the Easter season made the comparison even easier. With Peter, the Dominicans hoped in some way to surpass Francis, who had so ardently desired martyrdom and did not receive it. Peter wanted it, and God gave it to him. For the Dominicans, then, the desire for martyrdom was also about conforming one’s life to Christ; it did not, however, embody the virtues of humility and poverty to the same extent as for the Franciscans. The Dominicans were able to claim for Peter the triple crown—doctor, virgin, and martyr—a claim that was surely intended to counter Francis’s own reputation, and perhaps particularly the stigmata. Francis, after all, could only claim two of these titles (at least before the end of the fourteenth century). Fra Angelico, the Dominican painter of the fifteenth century, even painted them in parallel: Francis receiving the stigmata was paired with the martyrdom of Peter, with their respective wounds matching.93 By the fourteenth century, Peter’s association with martyrdom was so strong that a local Franciscan chronicle from Ireland mentioned his holy death, but never mentioned the martyrdom of any Franciscans.94
Conclusion
For the first century of the Franciscan Order’s existence, martyrdom lurked uneasily under many of the community’s values and cherished narratives. Desired but not achieved, praised but criticized, an escape from the world but a sign of a friar’s love for it, martyrdom summed up the many directions Franciscans were drawn toward in their first decades. Subsequent generations of friars brought some clarity to the place the desire for martyrdom should have in a friar’s life. Martyrdom among Franciscans in the thirteenth century was regarded as a sign of sanctity when expressed as a desire, but its achievement excited little interest. Thomas of Celano thus praised Francis for his desire, but insisted that God would not let him achieve it. Other brothers, close to Francis, downplayed the desire for martyrdom, and even suggested that the saint did not approve of the negative attitudes toward the body that shared with the martyrial perspective contempt for the world and the human body. Only in the fourteenth century did Franciscans grow fascinated by their brothers who had died violently and willingly.