Saint Francis of Assisi endures today as the patron saint of animals and the environment due to a reputation for his ultra-sensitive ability to communicate with animals and birds, and his praise for nature, especially noted in his poem, Song of the Sun.
In the remarkable Musée De Cluny in Paris, a museum of the Middle Ages housed in a 15th century mini-castle, are many relics such as this bronze engraving of "the stigmata" of St. Francis. He stands with his arms upraised toward the amazing depiction of an angel: a bony skeleton wrapped in rainbow-colored feathers. Four brightly budded trees mimic the four points of the cross as the two figures share the stigmata associated with the Christian-lauded Crucifixion.
St. Francis, or Francesco Bernardone, spent his early years as a troubadour of the French (Provençal) tradition, wandering playfully in bright costumes, singing and reciting poetry. Troubadours apparently originate from the Saracenic tribes from Syria and Arabia. Both the lute and poetry were tools used by the Sufis for spiritual development. Sufis today are associated by many as the esoteric sect of Islam, even as this is not perfectly accurate. (There are many Western Sufi Orders, in particular, whose traditions stem from Arabic origins but are not officially associated with Islam.) The Sufis themselves go by no real name (Sufi is simply a title for convenience) and claim no allegiance to any particular religion. This is part of their enduring tradition, and as Islam stemmed from Judaism and then Christianity, Sufism was also once thought by some to be the esoteric desert tradition of the Christians! Some time after Francesco embraced Christianity, he went to Pope Innocent III requesting permission to start a new monastic order, “The Lesser Bretheren” (Order of Friars Minor). In The Sufis, by Indries Shah, the connection is made between the Lesser Bretheren and an order of Sufis contemporary with St. Francis called “the Greater Brothers,” whose founding teacher, Najmuddin Kubra “The Greater,” had had an “uncanny influence over animals”.
Interestingly, St. Francis set out toward Syria in his early thirties, but returned to Italy for financial reasons. He tried again later, heading to Morocco by way of Spain, but returned home (1214) before reaching his destination due to illness. It should be recalled here that “Moorish Spain” existed until the 1490s, a gateway for Arabic and Muslim (and related) traditions into Europe that is much ignored today.
In 1224, St. Francis wrote the aforementioned Song of the Sun, a praise poem, considered to be the first Italian poem. An excerpt:
Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
The beloved Sufi poet, Rumi (1207-1273), also wrote many poems to “the sun”, as excerpted here*:
We are cast like sunlight upon the earth.
And our light, passing through your body
as if it were an open window to our Source,
returns, purified, to you.
Whoever sees that sun says, “He is alive,”
and whoever sees only the window says, “He is dying.”
The Sufis, Shah, Indries. Anchor Books, 1964. Pgs 257-264.
*The Rumi Collection, ed. Heminski, Kabir. Shambhala, 1998.
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