02Knights Templar - Julian Emperor

SAINTS IN THE MIDDLE AGES
St Francis believed that he had been instructed to repair the
damaged church and sold some of his father’s cloth to raise
money for the work. This greatly angered his father and the
conflict between the two reached a head when St Francis renounced
all his worldly goods, including his substantial inheritance,
in front of the Bishop of Assisi. He even abandoned the
clothes that his father had given him and was given a humbler
outfit in their stead by the bishop.
St Francis chose to embrace what he termed as ‘Lady
Poverty’ in his new life devoted to God. He restored the
Church of San Damiano by appealing to the rich of Assisi and
he lived as a beggar. He was said to have also been inspired
by Christ’s words to his disciples in Matthew 10:9 in which
he tells them to preach the arrival of the Kingdom of
Heaven.They are told to travel without money or comforts
and St Francis decided to follow their example, travelling as
a beggar and preaching. His sermons drew admiration and
he was soon joined by a small number of disciples of his
own. They set up a small religious community at a small
chapel close to Assisi called the Portiuncula, dedicated to St
Mary of the Angels. In 1209, St Francis decided to approach
the papacy to grant him the right to begin a new religious
order of brothers. Legend tells that Pope Innocent III first
denied St Francis an audience but, after Innocent had a
dream in which he saw a crumbling church being supported
by St Francis, he decided to authorise the foundation of the
Franciscan Order.
One aspect of the life and teachings of St Francis that is
perhaps not always recognised is that he was a strict follower
of Roman Catholic orthodoxy and dogma in religious matters.The
rule of the order laid out by St Francis in a work entitled
Regula Prima was officially recognised by the pope in
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