Commonwealth Club: Humanities West presents the 800th Anniversary of Francis of Assisi’s Death

San Francisco has been connected to Francis of Assisi for over 250 years, when Spanish explorers gave the name San Francisco Bay to the waters east of the Golden Gate. That connection intensified 180 years ago when the town of 600 called Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco. Humanities West and the Italian Cultural Institute celebrate this civilizational connection to the influential Italian who founded the Order of Friars Minor for priests and brothers and the Order of Saint Clare for cloistered nuns — having been inspired by his earlier membership in the lay organization Brothers and Sisters of Penance (a part of which organization later became the Franciscan Tertiaries). When Francis of Assisi died 800 years ago, on October 3, 1226, he was already famous not only for his contributions to religious thought and practice, but also for his deep respect for the natural world, his “small carbon footprint” lifestyle and his interest in the brotherhood of man. In his new biography, Augustine Thompson, O.P., has sifted through the surviving evidence for the life of Francis using modern historical methods. In Thompson’s complex yet sympathetic portrait, Francis emerges as a typical thirteenth-century Italian layman, but one who, when faced with unexpected crises in his personal life, made decisions so radical that they challenged his own society—and ours. Thompson peals away the layers of legend that quickly coalesced around Francis to reveal that Francis never had a unique divine inspiration to provide him with rules for following the teachings of Jesus. Rather, he spent his life reacting to unexpected challenges, before which he often found himself unprepared and uncertain. His famous devotion to poverty is more nuanced than expected, and perhaps not even his principal spiritual concern. Francis's troubled relations with his father, his friendship with Clare of Assisi, his encounter with the Muslim sultan, and his receiving the Stigmata, all help Thompson uncover the man behind the legends. Sam Dennison has lived and worked in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco for more than 15 years in community with Faithful Fools Street Ministry. Faithful Fools is many things, as all communities are, and everything they do is a celebration of our common humanity. Dennison will reflect on the charism of Francis and Clare and how it informs the Fools' commitment to witnessing and responding to poverty and the struggle for human dignity in a very wealthy city in a very wealthy nation. It's not always an easy thing, but it's never dull — a Foolish and Franciscan way of life, to be sure. Join us on the 800th anniversary of his death to find the real Francis of Assisi, because once you have a fuller grasp of his personality, it will not be surprising at all that San Francisco is the city whose citizens inspired tens of thousands to wear flowers in their hair, and aspired (even though they failed) to create a Summer of Love.