San Francesco 800

On the evening of October 3, 1226, a dying man asked to be laid naked on the bare earth of a small chapel near Assisi. Eight centuries later, the hillside paths he once walked through Umbria are being cleared and signposted again, and the basilica that holds his tomb still draws pilgrims along the same routes. A year of commemoration built around one date and the region that shaped it.

Origins of the Franciscan order: from the first companions to the Regula bullata (1206-1223)

Seventeen years, an oral approval, a lost first text and two versions of the rule: how a fraternity of penitents in Assisi became the Franciscan order.

By The Editors

/ 3 Oct 2026

Friars in undyed tunics walking a country road through olive groves toward hill towns, the first companions of Francis

Francis of Assisi's early life: from cloth merchant to the bishop's square (1181-1206)

This is the early life of Francis of Assisi, in the two decades before he founded a religious order. The son of a wealthy Assisi cloth merchant became a soldier, a prisoner of war in Perugia, and finally, in a public square, the man who returned to his father every coin and garment he owned.

By The Editors

/ 12 Sep 2026

Rich merchant's garments abandoned on the paving stones before Assisi's Santa Maria Maggiore

2026, the year of Francis: a guide to his 800th anniversary

Eight centuries after his death, the institutions, events and open questions behind Italy's yearlong commemoration of Francis of Assisi.

By The Editors

/ 8 Sep 2026

Illustrated portrait of Francis with a halo, in the style of early Franciscan devotional art