St Francis

[twirlynoodle]

I'm reading The Little Flowers of St Francis, a nearly contemporary memoir of anecdotes about Francis of Assisi and the early days of his monastic order, and

• There are an awful lot of monks who go spend the night in the woods in pairs to, er, 'talk about God', just sayin' (hey, God is love, man)
• I have seen lots of depictions of St Francis but none

Comments

[linda_lupos]

Yay St Francis. I read somewhere that he was the first (documented) person who received the stigmata, and while usually stigmatised people also had the headwounds caused by the crown of thorns, Francis didn't have them, and the theory is that is because in his time it wasn't usual to depict Jesus with the crown. It was only until a little after Francis's time that religious art really leaned into the suffering of Christ, and suffering *with* Christ. Francis was kind of ahead of his time there (he was into suffering before it was cool?). Another interesting stigmata bit.
*takes off religious studies hat *

Assisi is really worth a visit btw, especially around October 4th. Lovely medieval town, and the Giotto frescoes of his life are stunning.

And now I'm never going to unsee Friar Arthur Shappey, so uh, thanks for that? :p