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

ASSISI, Umbria, 1206 AD — In the bishop’s palace at Assisi this year, a cloth merchant’s son was told to pay his father back, and gave him more than the money. Saint Francis of Assisi handed his father, Pietro Bernardone, the money Pietro had taken him to court for, then took off every piece of clothing he had on and handed that over too. He told everyone in the hall that he would no longer call Pietro Bernardone his father.

Pietro wanted back the price of goods St. Francis had sold from his stock, and he wanted his son home. St. Francis wanted to live at San Damiano, a crumbling church below the town, own nothing, and give his life to serving God.

The quarrel began at San Damiano. Praying there, St. Francis heard the crucifix tell him to repair His house, because it was falling down. St. Francis took the words to mean San Damiano. This year, to pay for the work, he loaded scarlet cloth from his father’s stock onto his horse, rode to Foligno, and sold both the cloth and the horse. The priest of San Damiano, a poor man, would not keep it because he was afraid of the young man’s parents, so St. Francis threw the coins onto a window-sill as if they were dust.

Pietro Bernardone went looking for his son, and when he learned St. Francis was at San Damiano he gathered his friends and neighbours and hurried there. St. Francis hid from them for a whole month in a hiding place he had got ready beforehand. When he walked back into Assisi, thin from fasting, people who knew him shouted that he was mad and threw mud and stones at him. Pietro heard the noise in the streets and ran at his son. He dragged St. Francis into the house and shut him in a dark room for days. He tried words first, then beatings and chains, to turn his son back.

Then Pietro had to leave on business, and St. Francis’s mother, Pica, was left alone in the house with their son. Pica could not talk St. Francis out of serving God, so she broke his chains and let him go. Pietro came home and went down to San Damiano, meaning to drive his son out of the district if he could not bring him home. St. Francis walked out to meet his father and shouted that he cared nothing for Pietro’s chains or his beatings.

Once Pietro saw he could not turn his son back, he set out to recover his money instead. He complained to the consuls, the city’s magistrates, at the Palace of the Commune, and they sent an officer to summon St. Francis. St. Francis sent the officer back with the answer that by the grace of God he was now free, and no longer bound to the consuls, because he served God Most High alone. The consuls would not use force. They told the father: “From the time he entered the service of God, he hath gone out of our jurisdiction.” A man in the service of God answered to the bishop’s court, not the city’s.

So Pietro laid the same complaint before Bishop Guido of Assisi. Pietro wanted more than the money. He wanted St. Francis, in front of the bishop, to give up any claim to the family property he stood to inherit. Bishop Guido summoned St. Francis, and this time the son came. He told the messenger: “Unto the lord Bishop will I come, for he is the father and lord of souls.” The bishop welcomed him warmly and told him to give the money back. God did not want money that might have been dishonestly earned spent on the work of the Church, Bishop Guido said, and Pietro’s anger would cool once he had it again. Then the bishop told him: “Have thou then faith in the Lord, my son, and play the man, and fear not.”

St. Francis stood up, glad and reassured, and brought the money out. He said to the bishop: “My lord, I will give back unto him with a light heart not only the money that belongeth unto him, but my clothes also.” He went into the bishop’s private room and took off everything, his underclothes included. He came back out naked and laid the clothes on the money, in front of the bishop and everyone standing there. Then St. Francis spoke to everyone in the hall: “Hear all ye, and understand:—until now have I called Peter Bernardone my father, but, for that I purpose to serve the Lord, I give back unto him the money, over which he was vexed, and all the clothes that I have had of him, desiring to say only, ‘Our Father, Which art in Heaven,’ not ‘my father, Peter Bernardone.’”

The people in the hall saw that under his brightly coloured clothes he had been wearing a hair-shirt against his skin.

Pietro Bernardone got up, grieving and furious, and took the money and all the clothes. He left his son nothing to wear. As Pietro carried them home, the people who had watched turned against him for it, and out of pity for St. Francis they began to weep.

Bishop Guido put his arms around St. Francis and covered him with the cloak he was wearing.