Saint Francis and the Wolf

Last week I published some excerpts from an essay I wrote about entanglements between humans and animals. In the longer version, I argue that we need to find ways of returning non-human voices to the stories we tell about our place in the world. Although the longer form of the essay examines a couple of poems and extracts from the patristic and medieval tradition, I didn’t get to mention one of my favorite stories of human/non-human entanglement, which comes from a 13th-century florilegium called the “Little Flowers” of St. Francis of Assisi. It records an episode in which the saint intervened on behalf of the village of Gubbio, whose people and livestock were being ravaged by a rogue wolf.

San Francesco e il Lupo, from San Sepolcro Altarpiece (Sassetta, 1437–1444)

One day Francis walked outside the walls of the village and found the animal snarling and bristling with hatred. “Come hither, brother wolf,” Francis cried; “I command thee, in the name of Christ, neither to harm me nor anybody else." Instantly the wolf shut its mouth and came trotting up to Francis, where it curled up and lay at his feet. Francis excoriated the wolf for being a thief and a murderer. “But I will make peace between [the village] and thee, O brother wolf,” Francis proclaims, “and they shall forgive thee all thy past offenses, and neither men nor dogs shall pursue thee any more." The wolf bowed his head, and “by the movements of his body, his tail, and his eyes, made signs that he agreed to what St Francis said.” Francis took the wolf inside the village, where all the people marveled at what Francis had done. After delivering a sermon, the people made a pact with the wolf: the village promised to feed it every day, and the wolf, “by the motions of his tail and of his ears, endeavoured to show that he was willing,” and promised never again to harm the village.

Later, in 1872, when the church in Gubbio was being renovated, workers found the remains of a large wolf that had been buried under a slab by the church wall.

In an encyclical written to address the present environmental crisis enveloping the world, Pope Francis talks about how St. Francis modeled an “integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically.” St. Francis, he says, lived in such a way that “the world around him was so much more than intellectual appreciation or economic calculus, for to him each and every creature was a sister united to him by bonds of affection.” This attitude of kinship with all creation was more than “naive romanticism” because it emerged from the very specific form of life that Francis led. “The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis,” he explains, “were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.”

There’s much more to be said about this account of Franciscanism, which has a long and fascinating history in the Middle Ages. The followers of St Francis were involved in some very bitter controversies about private property and the doctrine of dominion. (One might argue that these debates culminated in England’s break with the see of Rome in 1534.)  Briefly, though, I want to offer some observations on the story of St. Francis and the wolf that intersect with the themes of Laudato Si and the essay I shared earlier this week. I should hasten to add that I’m less interested in whether the details of the story actually happened just so than how they might augur new ways of thinking with and about patristic and medieval doctrines of creation. 

1. In speaking with animals, St. Francis assumes they are capable of an articulacy that is expressed through the body. This seems obvious, but the way the story presents the wolf’s discourse with Francis should be familiar to anyone who’s ever had a dog. When Francis first addresses the wolf, it comes meekly trotting up and lies down before him “as meekly as a lamb” (See Is. 11:6, the wolf shall lie down with the lamb). Then, after Francis harangues the wolf for attacking both villagers and livestock, the wolf–unable to speak back–”bowed his head, and, by the movements of his body, his tail, and his eyes, made signs that he agreed to what St Francis said.” In these movements the wolf embodies the penitence and shame that will be urged in the sermon that Francis delivers to the people of Gubbio. Francis tells the congregation that the wolf acted the way he did because the wolf was hungry–in other words, because the villagers had not thought to provide for him in the first place. Wolves are pack animals, not solitary animals, and the implication here is that the wolf’s solitude is a deformation of a life more suitable or natural to it. Relations between animals and humans are implicated in, and in some sense depend upon, traditional forms of penitence and piety, because animals and humans share a common home. In the story, this common home appears to be underwritten by an understanding that, no matter how deformed human and non-human relations become, each has an obligation to seek the peace and well-being of the other.

2. The story assumes that it is possible for humans and the non-human world to covenant with each other. Twice in the story the wolf signals his agreement with St. Francis’s proposal by placing his paw in Francis’s hand. In both cases the wolf’s action is a response to Francis’s outstretched arm: once, outside the city, when the two first meet, and then again inside the church, when the wolf promises never again to attack the village, so long as the village promises to feed him every day. The narrative describes the wolf’s action of placing his paw in Francis’s hand as “the only pledge which was in his power.”

3. The wolf becomes a mendicant, a wandering beggar, much like Francis himself.  After Francis brokered peace between the village and the wolf,

   the wolf lived two years at Gubbio; he went familiarly from door to door without harming anyone, and all the people received him courteously, feeding him with great pleasure, and no dog barked at him as he went about. At last, after two years, he died of old age, and the people of Gubbio mourned his loss greatly; for when they saw him going about so gently amongst them all, he reminded them of the virtue and sanctity of St Francis.

   Like the converted wolf, St. Francis lived as a vagrant, refusing to own any property. He lived outdoors in the open or in crude shelters. But rather than construe the poverty that Francis and the wolf participate in as an ascetic rejection of the world, the story suggests that this life reflects an authentically creaturely mode of existence: taking only what one needs, and in acknowledgement of the life and labor that brought it into existence; giving no thought what one owns or wears; striving to live like the lilies and the sparrows of the Gospels. It’s a mode of existence that treats the world as a gift to be shared, not a resource to be plundered.