St. Francis

After nights of peaceful demonstrations and in the wake of rioting,
in the midst of a pandemic that has claimed 
more than 105,000 American lives, 
the brother of George Floyd urged Americans to “take a breath.”
Please take a breath and reflect.

In the earliest morning hours one day in late September 1219, avoiding the scorching heat of midday, Illuminato and his companion set out from a siege camp outside the Egyptian port city of Damietta for the encampment of the Muslim Sultan Malik al-Kamil, eight miles away. 

Illuminato revered his fellow pilgrim, who, as a youth of perhaps twenty, had joined a military expedition against Perugia, witnessed the horror and inhumanity of 13th century war, languished for a year in a Perugian prison, and returned home with all of the emotional and physical burdens of PTSD. Illuminto, who reportedly had been blind from birth, credited the prayers of his companion with the restoration of his sight. 

While much of this historic journey is clouded by myth and hagiography, much is also known. They arrived at the Crusaders’ siege camp sometime between late July and mid-August. John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem, was embroiled in an on-going conflict with the papal legate to the Fifth Crusade, Cardinal Pelagius Galvani, who fancied himself a military genius. Pelagius collided with nearly everyone. In fact, the author of The Chronicle of Ernoul, reported the fate of two cardinals in a battle: Although one died, “Cardinal Pelagius lived, which was a great shame.” Despised for his high-handed manner and opulence, he relished authority and finery. 

Illuminato and a small group of other friars, including his mentor, arrived in the Egypt soon after another disastrous Crusader attack on the great walled city and while the scent of death hung over the Christian encamp. The Europeans had been attempting to conquer the city that controlled Egypt and the Nile since 1169.The small company immediately set to ministering to the wounded and dispirited Europeans – especially the foot soldiers, even though the prisoner of Perugia had never seen anything as horrifying as the battlefield of Damietta. Each day filled with horrors as the Crusaders mutilated captured spies, cutting off their noses, arms, lips and ears and gouging out one eye on each – sending half back to the Muslim camp and displaying the others. 

The arrogant Pelagius kept secret from John of Brienne and his French allies, a new assault planned for August 29, 1219, the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. Having spent hours in prayer and reflecting on his own experiences of the horrors of war, Illuminato’s companion declared, “If the battle happens on this day, the Lord has shown me that it will not go well… But if I say this, they will take me for a fool, and if I keep silent, my conscience won’t leave me alone.” “Father,” an unknown friar, perhaps Peter of Catania, advised “don’t give the least thought to how people judge you. This wouldn’t be the first time people took you for a fool. Unburden your conscience, and fear God rather than men.” Thus freed, the itinerant medicant, “leapt to his feet, and rushed to the Christians crying out warnings to save them, forbidding war and threatening disaster,” according to Thomas of Celano. “But they took the truth as a joke. They hardened their hearts and refused to turn back.”

Perhaps having heard the seer’s warning, John of Brienne attempted to sue for peace, but the cardinal would have his battle and dismissed the “despicable and unknown friar.” Refusing to go into battle, even to accompany the poor foot soldiers, the seer and his companions prayed, and three times the “despicable and unknown friar” who carried the horrors of war sheered into his soul, sent a companion to observe and report on the battle. “What a sight!” Thomas of Celano wrote. “The whole Christian army was in retreat fleeing from the battle carrying not triumph but shame. The massacre was so great that between the dead and the captives the number of our force was diminished by six thousand.”

Grieved by so many deaths and scorned by the Europeans because of the visionary’s prediction of a battlefield disaster, Illuminato and the scrawny little friar, Francis of Assisi  - a  living indictment of the cardinal’s failure in war and arrogance in life - determined to prevent another bloodbath by undertaking the eight mile journey to the sultan’s encampment.

We can be certain that the future saint insisted to sentinels “I am a Christian, bring me to your master,” and greeted his Muslim host, who three times had offered peace treaties that included control of Jerusalem, “May the Lord give you peace” – his customary salutation, both prayer and greeting, one, he wrote, Jesus had “revealed” to him and remarkably similar to the Arabic greeting as-salamu alaikum - “peace be upon you.”

More than eight-hundred years later, hagiography and legend blend together. Yet history teaches us that Francis and his companion approached the Muslim leader with humility and respect.  “He had no fear of anyone’s status rather he spoke calmly to the wise and uneducated, to the great and the small,” wrote Brother Julian of Speyer in the 1230s.

While we do not know precisely how long the two friars stayed in al-Kamir’s camp, chroniclers make clear that their days were marked by mutual respect and dialogue, as the friars and sultan and his religious leaders hoped to convert each other – even as Pelagius and his Crusaders prepared for yet another attack on Muslim forces. James of Vitry reported al-Kamir bade farewell to his guests with the words “Pray for me, that God may reveal to me the law and the faith that is most pleasing to him.” For a few days, a simple friar and his companion and one of the world’s most powerful warriors put aside religious animosities and the bloodshed of centuries of crusades and dialogued in peace. 

Although we do know that al-Kamil, a year and a half older than Francis, had more than a passing familiarity with Christianity, history can never recover what happened in the dialogues between the saint and the sultan in the Fariskur camp. 

Francis and Illuminato taught with honesty and simplicity, never attacking Muhammad or Islam, and, in return, the honored guests were permitted to wander the camp, view religious practices – especially the call to prayer - and speak to Muslim intellectuals and soldiers. – while both armies preferred for the next battle. Clearly, the fact that the two spent so much time in the camp indicates that Francis and al-Kamir treated each other as friends.  

Francis’s, surely polite, rejection of the valuable gifts the Sultan attempted to bestow upon hm – “great quantities of gold, silver, and silk garments” according to The Chronicles of Ernoul - confirmed to the sultan that he was “a man different from all others,” according to Thomas of Celano.

In the end, however, the sojourn in Fariskur had a profound impact on Francis. He observed that five time a day even Muslim warriors interrupted the task of the moment to respond to the call to prayer and marveled their recitation of the ninety-nine names of God.

In late September 1219, Damietta with its tripled walls and twenty-eight towers fell to Crusader forces; barely 3,000 of the 80,000 inhabitants survived and disease and starvation continued to take their toll. Less than thirty years later, a Franciscan author observed, “Brother Francis… saw how evil and sin started to increase among the (Crusader) people and detested it.” 

It is probable the Francis remained in the destroyed harbor city until at least the beginning of February 1220 before beginning a laborious, soul-racking journey home during which he learned of the martyrdoms – by beheadings - of five of his friars who repeatedly attempted to convert Muslims in Morocco and the attempts of others to rewrite his Rule. The friars had ignored Francis’s admonitions to respect the lives and faiths of those to whom they were sent. 

Francis arrived in Venice in the spring or summer to find his Order in complete disarray – victim of the pride and arrogance of some of those whom he had left in charge. 

The ensuing struggle for control of the Order saw Francis’s directives for brothers approaching Muslims to “conduct themselves among them spiritually in two ways. One way is to avoid quarrels or disputes and to be subject to every human creature for God’s sake, so bearing witness to the fact that they (the friars) are Christians. Another way is to proclaim the word of God openly, when they see that it is God’s will, calling on their hearers to believe in God almighty….”

Francis effectively forbade his brothers from seeking martyrdom and confrontation with Muslims. He preached the radical idea that his friars should “be subject to every human being for God’s sake,” including “subject” to Muslims. 

In Damietta, Pelagius remained his arrogant and genius self, rejecting the counsel of John of Brienne and in August 1221 attempted another confrontation with al-Kamil. “Sane counsel was far removed from our leaders” wrote Oliver of Paderton, When the sultan’s forces diverted the course of the Nile, the crusaders were undone – trapped in waist-high waters that meant certain death for crusaders and their horses and destroying their food supplies. Pelagius attempted – unsuccessfully - to flee in ignominy, taking with him much of the crusaders’ remaining food supply and forcing their surrender on August 30, 1221. 

Rather than extract a devastating revenge, al-Kamir showed generosity. For fifteen days he provided daily stores of bread, pomegranates and melons for the surviving troops and feed for their horses and other animals - until they were able to abandon their Egyptian lands.

Strategic? Perhaps.

Tactical? Perhaps.

The influence of Francis and his humble respect? Please God! 

Estimates range between one million and three million deaths during the 177 years of the Christian crusades against the Muslims (1095-1291).

 As the United States prepares for elections that loom fraught with hatred and vitriol, the encounter of Francis and Illuminato with the sultan serves as a model for a new civility based in humility and respect. 

Eight-hundred years after the journey of the friars to the camp at Fariskur, it is time to reject the arrogance and “genius,” the high-handed manner and opulence of those who relish authority and finery. It is time for the acceptance, humility and respect for others modelled by two simple friars trekking across desert sands to bring peace.

Perhaps, perhaps, if we can become a nation of dialogue and respect and humility, we might, we just might echo the words of the Prayer St. Francis entrusted to Brother Leo two years before Francis’s death, words reflecting Islam’s ninety-nine names for God

You are holy, Lord, the only God,
and Your deeds are wonderful.
You are strong.
You are great.
You are the Most High.
You are Almighty.
You, Holy Father are King of heaven and earth.
You are Three and One, Lord God, all Good.
You are Good, all Good, supreme Good,
Lord God, living and true.
You are love. You are wisdom.
You are humility. You are endurance.
You are rest. You are peace.
You are joy and gladness.
You are justice and moderation.
You are all our riches, and You suffice for us.
You are beauty.
You are gentleness.
You are our protector.
You are our guardian and defender.
You are our courage. You are our haven and our hope.
You are our faith, our great consolation.
You are our eternal life, Great and Wonderful Lord,
God Almighty, Merciful Saviour.