event · BEFORE DAMIETTA, Egypt, 29 August 1219 AD

Crusaders beaten before Damietta with St. Francis in the camp

Edition of 29 August 2026

A medieval Italian wall painting of a crusader camp on a riverbank: three barefoot friars in patched brown tunics with rope girdles stand at the left, one turned toward the camp, while soldiers in rose tunics carry wounded men on a cloth among canvas tents, with the closed mud-brick walls and towers of Damietta across the water behind. — The crusader camp before Damietta, Egypt, 29 August 1219 AD, with St. Francis of Assisi among the tents as the beaten army is carried in.
About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of buon fresco of the Assisi cycle, from the paper's reference portrait based on Frater Franciscus — bust detail of the portrait of St. Francis in the Sacro Speco (Anonymous, attributed to a Benedictine of Subiaco, c. 1224–1229 AD, Monastero del Sacro Speco, Subiaco) View source artwork.

BEFORE DAMIETTA, Egypt, 29 August 1219 AD — The crusading army attacked before Damietta today and was beaten. Saint Francis of Assisi was in the camp. He had argued against the battle and said the Christians would lose it. No one listened.

Thomas of Celano, who places St. Francis in the camp, writes that he was badly shaken as soon as he heard the men were arming. “If they fight on such a day the Lord hath showed me that the Christians will not prosper,” he told a companion Celano does not name. He warned the soldiers in the open, and they made a joke of it. Celano puts the losses at 6,000 killed and captured.

Paul Sabatier, who gives today’s date, writes that the state of the army has distressed St. Francis from the start: it has prelates and the apostolic legate with it, and no discipline.

The crusaders landed here in May 1218 AD, and the siege goes on.

About this story

Catholic Saints News tells the lives of the saints as news from their own time and place. This story was written with AI from the historical record, and we read and approved it before it ran.

The Saints' words. This newspaper will never make a saint say something the historical record does not preserve.

Image. AI-generated image, in the manner of buon fresco of the Assisi cycle, from the paper's reference portrait based on Frater Franciscus — bust detail of the portrait of St. Francis in the Sacro Speco (Anonymous, attributed to a Benedictine of Subiaco, c. 1224–1229 AD, Monastero del Sacro Speco, Subiaco) — see the original.

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More on this saint

A half-length fresco portrait of a bearded friar in a hooded brown habit tied with a knotted cord, facing forward with one hand raised to his chest, against a dark background bearing the painted inscription of his name.

Life of a Saint

Saint Francis of Assisi

The cloth merchant's son who gave back his clothes, begged his bread, and came down a Tuscan mountain marked with the stigmata.

Read the life ›

In a fresco, a half-clothed young man with a halo raises his hand to heaven while an angry father in a yellow robe, holding the bundled clothes, is pulled back by a man in red; a bishop shelters the young man with his cloak, and townspeople look on.

event · ASSISI, Umbria, 1206 AD

Before the bishop, St. Francis returns his father's money and his clothes

Pietro Bernardone, a cloth merchant, took his son, Saint Francis of Assisi, before the bishop of Assisi over cloth St. Francis had sold to repair a church. Told to pay the money back, St. Francis took off his clothes, laid them on the money and said he would now call only God his Father. Bishop Guido covered him with his own cloak.

Edition of 25 September 2026 · 4 min read

Five barefoot friars in patched grey-brown habits tied with knotted ropes stand and crouch around a small table in a bare white room, reading an opened sheet of parchment with a round lead seal hanging from it, an arched opening on the right showing a hill town and green country. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of buon fresco at Assisi, from the paper's reference portrait based on Legend of St. Francis, scene 13: Institution of the Crib at Greccio (Giotto di Bondone and workshop, 1296–1298 AD, Upper Church, Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi) View source artwork.

writings · VITERBO, Papal States, September 22, 1220 AD

Pope Honorius III sets a year's wait on joining St. Francis's friars

A letter of Pope Honorius III, sealed at Viterbo on September 22, orders the Friars Minor to admit no one to vows until he has spent a year on trial. It forbids any friar who has taken vows to leave, and any man in their habit to travel without permission. Until now a man joined by telling Saint Francis of Assisi he wanted to live the Gospel with him and giving away everything he owned.

Edition of 24 September 2026 · 4 min read

Also in the edition of Saturday, 29 August 2026

event · ALENÇON, Normandy, 29 August 1877 AD

St. Zélie Martin is buried at Alençon without her five daughters

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interview · CHELSEA, Middlesex, August 1534 AD

Margaret Roper on her father, St. Thomas More, in the Tower

St. Thomas More, the former Lord Chancellor of England, has been a prisoner in the Tower of London since April, and almost everything preserved of what he says there comes through his eldest daughter, Margaret Roper. At Chelsea this month she is writing a letter to her stepsister Alice Alington that records their long argument about the oath, largely in his own words. She speaks about what she carries in to him, her mother's failed attempt to change his mind, and his answer that the Tower is as near heaven as his own house.

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Monica and Augustine at Ostia · Part 3 · HIPPO REGIUS, Numidia, about 397 AD

Book IX: what St. Augustine wrote down about the window at Ostia

Book IX of the Confessions is St. Augustine's own account of the months from his resignation at Milan in 386 AD to St. Monica's death and burial at Ostia in 387 AD. He wrote it at Hippo Regius about 397 AD, some ten years after the death it records. The paper reads four passages: the chest complaint that let him leave his chair, the conversation at the window, his mother's last request, and the grief he faults himself for.