Why Stigmata Is Described as a Mark of a Special Holiness on St. Francis by Bonaventure - Essay Example

Bonaventure wrote the biography of St. Francis, " The Life of St. Francis" in the years 1260-63 describing the saint's life and virtues, and it became one of the most widely read texts of the Franciscan order in the latter part of the middle ages. Bonaventure also talked about one of the biggest events that gave widespread recognition and veneration to St. Francis, the stigmata, throughout the text and especially in an entire chapter devoted to the event. All along, Bonaventure eulogizes the stigmata as a mark that reinforces the sanctity of St. Francis. In places, he talks as well about the saint's relentless attempts to hide this special blessing during his lifetime. It would be my attempt in this paper to understand the reason the stigmata is described by Bonaventure as a mark of a special holiness on St. Francis, and if it was indeed special, the reason why the saint tried his best to keep it a secret during his lifetime. Bonaventure was attempting to establish St. Francis as a man " venerable and worthy of imitation",( P 182) and hailing the stigmata as the ultimate justification for worshipping the saint. As he says in the Prologue itself:"... But even more is this confirmed/ with the irrefutable testimony of truth/by the seal of likeness of the living God,/namely of Christ crucified,/which was imprinted upon his body/not by natural forces or by human skill/but by the wondrous power/of the Spirit of the living God."( P 182).But perhaps his motives as a theologian for setting up St. Francis as an exemplary saint were not unmixed with the politics of the Franciscan Order, and the immediate needs for the survival of the Order itself. Issues of this nature can only be resolved by studying Bonaventure's general outline of St. Francis's life and his character traits and aspirations. We would need to investigate what made St. Francis who he was, what he considered the purpose of his life and the reasons why St. Francis was considered holy even before he received the stigmata. We would also do well to perhaps look into who Bonaventure was, the historical context in which he wrote the text, why he undertook its writing, the state of the Franciscan Order during that period. Moroever, since the text is a biography we need to qualify the distance from St Francis's actual lifetime it was written. It would also be important to know what other accounts, if any, of St.Francis's life were available at the time, because no text can be completely understood without a discussion on the background from which it emerged. And to grasp the special significance of the stigmata and the saint's efforts at concealment of this phenomenon it is important to understand the text in its entirety. Even in the very beginning when Bonaventure describes St. Francis in the first chapter "On Saint Francis's Manner of Life while in Secular Attire" Bonaventure remarks upon the good nature of the saint-to-be, emphasizing his suitability for receiving the sacred stigmata: "His gentleness, his refined manners, his patience, his superhuman affability, his generosity beyond his means, marked him as a young man of flourishing natural disposition. This seemed to be a prelude to the even greater abundance of God's blessings that would be showered on him in the future".( P 186). But it is in receiving the vision of Jesus Christ on the cross as described by Bonaventure in poetic detail that marks the lifelong passion of St. Francis to imitate the life of Christ; to worship him through imitation by undertaking pain, trials and tribulations. It is significant here that Jesus Christ does not appear to the holy man in His beautiful resurrected form, but in the painful impalement on the cross, somewhat foretelling the Seraphic vision that accompanies the stigmata. This terrible aspect of Christ's voluntary suffering aroused the youthful Francis's empathy and sustained it through the rest of the years of his life: After long and urgent prayer, he merited to be heard by the Lord. One day while he was praying in such a secluded spot and became totally absorbed in God through his extreme fervor, Jesus Christ appeared to him fastened to the cross. Francis's soul melted ( Cant. 5:6) at the sight, and the memory of Christ's passion was so impressed on the innermost recesses of his heart that from that hour, whenever Christ's crucifixion came to his mind, he could scarcely contain his tears and sighs, as he later revealed to his companions when he was approaching the end of his life. Through this the man of God understood as addressed to himself the Gospel text: If you wish to come after me, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me ( Matt. 16: 24). ...From that time on he clothed himself with a spirit of poverty, a sense of humility and a feeling of intimate devotion. ( P 189) Bonaventure describes the consequences of the vision of the Christ on cross in St. Francis telling his audience how the saint became inspired to a life of poverty, and later "rendered humble service to the lepers with human concern and devoted kindness in order that he might completely despise himself, because of Christ crucified, who according to the text of the prophet was despised as a leper ( Isa. 53:3)".( P 190). Bonaventure thus establishes early the empathy St. Francis feels for the Lord, and the sincerity he shows in following the Lord's example by overcoming his aversion to lepers. According to Bonaventure this attribute and the "mortification of flesh" that the saint pursued, were already making him ready to receive the stigmata: "so that he might carry externally in his body the cross of Christ". Thus Bonaventure firmly establishes the stigmata as the emblem of the holy cross on St. Francis's body in the very first chapter itself. And even while describing a stage when the young Francis is not even a friar, he calls Francis "the man of God", and clearly associates the idea of the stigmata that adheres to "the man of God" : "He paid great attention/ to the mortification of the flesh/ so that he might carry externally in his body the cross of Christ/ which he carried internally in his heart./ Francis, the man of God,/ did all these things when he was not yet withdrawn/ from the dress and life of the world". (P 190) Bonaventure peppers the text with references to the the passion of St. Francis to become as much like Jesus as possible, in sentences like, " Jesus Christ crucified always rested like a bundle of myrrh in the bosom of Francis's soul ( Cant. 1:12), and he longed to be totally transformed into him by the fire of ecstatic love".( P 263) Not only does this prepare the audience for the climactic point where the long anticipated stigmata is finally received, but also tells them that this is the highest mark of sanctity, even higher than the martyrdom the saint so dearly wished for himself. This is clear in the instance where the saint dares to preach to the Soldan of Babylon at the risk of his life, even offering to walk through fire in the name of Christ and Christendom, where the Soldan does not take the challenge. Here Bonaventure creates a preamble for the stigmata, where the saint is destined not to be a martyr but to carry the sign of Christ as a living proof of his glory : "......it came about/ mercifully and remarkably/ that the friend of Christ/ sought with all his strength/ to die for Him/ and yet could not achieve it./Thus he was not deprived/ of the merit of his desired martyrdom/ and was spared/ to be honored in the future/ with a unique privilege./ Thus it came about/ that the divine fire/ burned still more perfectly in his heart/so that later it steamed forth clearly in his flesh./ O truly blessed man,/ whose flesh,/ although not cut down by a tyrant's steel, was yet not deprived/ of bearing a likeness of the Lamb that was slain!" (P 271). And of the stigmatization itself Bonaventure says, "By the Seraphic ardor of his desires, he was being borne aloft into God; and by his sweet compassion he was being transformed into him who chose to be crucified because of the excess of his love ( Eph. 2:4)". ( P 305). This likens St. Francis to Christ , where he becomes a Christ himself through the ardor of his all-consuming divine passion, a concept about St. Francis that perpetuated itself in the years that followed, and Bonaventure's writings were partially responsible for this belief . "No one, it seemed, had lived a life in closer harmony with the Gospels, making Francis, in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, nothing less than an alter Christus: a second Christ".( Book :The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered. Kenneth Boxter Wolf - author. Oxford University Press. New York. 2003. P Number: 3.) The stigmata is followed by a series of miracles, which Bonaventure describes as a way to establish the veracity of the stigmata and its resulting bounty of holiness, and sums up these miracles in the following lines of eulogy: "Thus it is established by convincing evidence/ that these sacred marks were imprinted on him/ by the power of the One who purifies, illumines and inflames/ through the action of the Seraphim./ With their miraculous power/ these sacred marks,/ in the external realm,/ restored health by purifying from a pestilence,/ produced serene skies,/ and gave heat to the body".(P 309) Bonaventure is able to establish here that the stigmata on St. Francis had a special significance with miraculous properties, and were thus a sign of his boundless sanctification. And here Bonaventure further adds to the greatness of St. Francis by showing us the saint's hesitation over divulging the nature of his supreme blessing, even to those that were closest to him: "When Christ's servant realized that he could not conceal from his intimate companions the stigmata that had been so visibly imprinted on his flesh, he feared to make public the Lord's secret ( Tob. 12:7) and was thrown into an agony of doubt whether to tell what he had seen or to be silent about it". (P 306) The saint did not want to turn the attention away from Christ and onto himself, and Bonaventure tells us that "the holy man used to say on other occasions: "My secret is for myself" ( Isa. 24:16)"(P 307), and "Because it is good to keep hidden the secret of the King, Francis, aware that he had been given a royal secret, to the best of his powers kept the sacred stigmata hidden". (P.307). Moroever, the nature of the communication between the Seraph and the saint were "so secret that men are not permitted to speak of them ( 2 Cor. 12:4)", and the saint was reluctant to reveal the entire event(P.307). Bonaventure further heightens Francis's stature by stressing on his exemplary humility in leaving God to take credit for his own miracle: "Since it is for God to reveal for his own glory the wonders which he has performed,"(P.308). In addition St. Francis may not have wanted to make sensational claims in an environment where there was an increased interest in the physical, blood-soaked aspects of Christ's crucifixion: It should be pointed out that Francis's stigmata occurred in a medieval climate of morbid fascination with the physical effects of crucifixion- depicted in art, shown in miracle plays, and expressed in acts of self- mutilation. For example, just two years before Francis exhibited the stigmata a young man was tried on a charge that he "made himself out to be Christ and . . . perforated his hands and feet," apparently deliberately, so as to enable him to be repeatedly nailed to a cross for exhibitionistic purposes. (Book : Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions & Healing Cures. Joe Nickell - author. Prometheus Books. Amherst, NY. 1993. P. 220). Having seen how Bonaventure has established the stigmatization of St. Francis through the descriptions of his empathy with Christ, a desire for emulation of His Gospel, an aspiration for martyrdom, general piety, and by the creation of a heightened anticipation for the stigmata, we may now examine why he felt the need to do so. Born in 1217, Bonaventure was nine when St. Francis left his body in 1226. Though it is unlikely that the author met St. Francis, he is very clear in the prologue to the text about his immense personal debt to the holy man: For when I was a boy, as I still vividly remember, I was snatched from the jaws of death by his invocation and merits. So if I remained silent and did not sing his praises, I fear that I would be rightly accused of the crime of ingratitude. I recognize that God saved my life through him, and I realize that I have experienced his power in my very person. This debt made him a devout Franciscan, as did his preliminary education in the Franciscan friary at Bagnoregio, and he went on to become a famous scholar and also a friar minor and later a friar. He eventually went on to become a Master of the Franciscan School at a time when battle lines had been drawn between the secular Franciscans and the mendicant Dominicans, and by 1257 had become the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, a post he was to keep for almost two decades. In 1260 in the General Chapter of the Friars in Narbonne, he was authorized to write the official biography of St. Francis. But this by no means meant that this was the first biography, nor was it written in a contextual vacuum. It was written in the background of the raging controversy over Franciscan poverty and what poverty meant to the friars. While St. Francis had emphasized on total poverty and possession of absolutely nothing, the Order had aspirations to evolve. The rigorous followers of Franciscan poverty or Spirituals were against the pastoral role envisioned by the papal supporters, or the Friars of the Community. The controversy had only become worse with Pope Gregory IX's Quo elongati in1230, which made certain exceptions to the need for absolute poverty.( For more details on the context of the controversy on poverty, see The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered, p. 91-105). The Minister General Bonaventure's job was to rescue the Franciscan Order from this controversy and establish Franciscan poverty as an institutional entity, and establish St. Francis as an exemplary Christian saint. Within the Franciscan Order, Bonaventure is considered its second founder and the chief architect of its spirituality. As minister general of the Friars Minor for seventeen years at a crucial period in their history, he attempted to integrate the ideal of Francis of Assisi into the cumulative traditions of Christian spirituality and to shape that ideal into institutional forms which have survived to this day. (Book : Bonaventure. Contributors: Ewert Cousins - transltr. Paulist Press. Mahwah, NJ. 1978. P 1). Bonaventure chose to tread on the middle path, pacifying both the Spirituals and the Friarsof the community. He presents St. Francis in the Prologue in the tradition of Moses , Elijah and John the Baptist as the apocalyptic angel of the seal of the living God (Apoc 7,2) who marks the foreheads of the chosen ones with the cross of salvation, an image favored by the Friars of the Community, because of their association with the Joachim of Fiore and his concept of the age of the Spirit: "it can be reasonably proved/that he came in the spirit and power of Elijah. ....../bearing the seal of the living God,/ in the true prophecy/of that other friend of the Bridegroom, John the Apostle and Evangelist./...../and to mark with a Tau/the foreheads of men who moan and grieve, signing them with the cross of penance/ and clothing them with his habit, which is in the form of a cross". But on the other hand he also pacifies those with the strictest belief in the Rule of poverty, by starting the text with the line: "In these last days/ the grace of God our Savior has appeared/ in his servant Francis to all who are truly humble and lovers of holy poverty".(P.179) In this pseudo-political role, Bonaventure does his best to consolidate the order by reiterating the sanctification of St. Francis time and again through the mention of the stigmata. He himself was an ardent follower of St. Francis and sought through this text to uphold the example that St. Francis's life presented in terms of adhering to the Gospel; but this was not his only motive as a theologian. He sought to establish the supremacy of St. Francis so that the warring factions of the order are united under one fold because of their devotion to St. Francis whose sanctity was undeniable, having been singled out for the "unique privilege" (P.271)of the stigmata. The holy stigmata was the answer to all the arguments the Friars of the Community could present. If St. Francis was truly a man of God as proven by the stigmata, his life and his example should be followed without question and become the basis for the institutional entity of the Franciscan Order. As a Minister General, Bonaventure's bid to immortalize St. Francis as the living proof of God was also given somewhat more success because of the decision in 1266 of the friars of the order gathered at Paris to burn all other accounts of St. Francis's life other than the official version by Bonaventure. By upholding the simple piety and poverty of St. Francis's life, establishing the stigmata as a special mark of sanctification, presenting the stigmata as the ultimate and irrefutable proof of St.Francis's godliness, and elaborating on his attempts at the concealment of the stigmata as his supreme humility Bonaventure has been able to establish St. Francis as the true and exemplary leader of the Franciscan order. By diplomatic and subtle use of imagery favored by either the Spirituals or the Friars of the Community he has attempted to show St. francis as an example who will stand the test of time. When St. Francis says that "I have done my duty; may Christ teach you yours",(P.317) it is in the simplicity of gratitude for being able to follow the Lord's way and the hope and benediction that Christ would lead the way for those that seek it. Read More