Francis of Assisi

The son of a wealthy cloth merchant of Assisi, Giovanni di Pietro Bernardone led a brilliant youth until captivity in Perugia and a long illness turned him around. Before the crucifix of San Damiano he heard the command: "Go, repair my house, which is falling into ruin." Summoned by his father to return the goods he was giving away as alms, he handed back even his clothes in the public square, and had thereafter no father but the one in heaven. A brotherhood of itinerant poor formed around him, approved by Pope Innocent III in 1210; with Clare he gave rise to the Order of Poor Ladies. In 1219, at the height of the Fifth Crusade, he crossed the lines to meet Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil at Damietta, who heard him out and let him go. At Greccio in 1223 he had the first living nativity scene set up. Two years later, on Mount La Verna, he received the stigmata, the first attested case in Christian history. Nearly blind, he composed the Canticle of the Creatures, among the earliest texts in the Italian language. He died on 3 October 1226 and was canonised less than two years later.