Saint Francis of Assisi goes home after a year in Perugia's prison

PERUGIA, Umbria, November 1203 AD — The men Perugia took prisoner in the plain last year have been released, and Saint Francis of Assisi is going home with them. He is the son of an Assisi cloth merchant. He was about twenty when he was taken, and he has spent more than a year in this city in chains. The other men held with him complained aloud about what had become of them. St. Francis was cheerful the whole time.

Assisi and Perugia are neighbouring cities in Umbria, and last year they went to war. Perugia was then at the height of its power and had already made several attempts to bring Assisi under it. The armies met in the plain about half way between the two, not far from Ponte San Giovanni, and Assisi was beaten. St. Francis went out with the townsmen and was in the ranks. He was taken prisoner with many other men of his city.

The war began inside Assisi. Duke Conrad of Suabia held the city from the fortress above it, and to keep it he offered Pope Innocent III money, men and his own fealty. Pope Innocent III refused. Conrad gave the city up and went to Narni, where he formally surrendered it to two of the Pope’s cardinals. The people of Assisi went up to the fortress as soon as he was on the road and pulled it down to the ground. Then they built a wall around their city, everyone working on it, and it went up fast.

The commons, who had learned in that fight how strong they were, moved next on the property of the nobles. The nobles shut themselves into their fortified houses inside the city and their castles outside it, and the townspeople burned several of the castles down. The counts and barons went to the neighbouring cities for help. Perugia took the exiles in, made their quarrel its own and declared war on Assisi in 1202 AD.

St. Francis worked in his father Pietro Bernardone’s cloth business and had little taste for the trade. What he spent his money on was banquets and songs with the other young men of Assisi, and clothes: he would have a length of costly cloth set against a cheap one on the same coat. He was courteous, and he made a rule of never answering the people who said insulting things to him. One day in his father’s warehouse a man asked him for alms for the love of God, and he sent the man away. Then he went out after him and resolved never again to refuse anyone who asked in that name.

In Perugia he was put in with the knights rather than with the common townsmen, because of the way he carried himself.

He spent the year making plans for what he would do afterwards and talking about them to anyone who would listen, and the men shut in with him thought he was half mad. One of them said so. He told St. Francis that only a madman would be cheerful in a prison. Three of his early followers, known as the Three Companions, wrote down what they remembered of him. They record that St. Francis shouted his answer: “What think ye of me? I shall be worshipped by the whole world.” Thomas of Celano gives the same answer in different words: “Wherein think you that I exult? Another thought is with me: I shall yet be worshipped as a Saint all the world over.” St. Francis was in chains when he said it, and so was every man who heard him.

The war has ended in arbitration. This month the arbitrators the two sides had named announced their decision: the commons of Assisi are to make good part of the damage done to the lords, and the lords are to make no further alliance without the commons’ permission. Serfdom in the country districts stands as it was.

With that settled, the prisoners held at Perugia have been let go, and St. Francis is going back to Assisi with the men who were taken with him. He caught a low fever in this prison, and he is taking it home.